prereview

Prereview is a collaborative, open-science initiative that facilitates community‑driven review of preprints—research manuscripts posted to publicly accessible servers before formal journal peer review. Launched in 2020 by the Center for Open Science and partners, the platform allows authors, reviewers, and other stakeholders to post structured, transparent evaluations of preprints, linking comments, recommendations, and metadata to the original manuscript. Prereview aims to improve the speed, accessibility, and inclusivity of scholarly assessment by decoupling feedback from traditional publishing timelines and paywalls.

The service supports a range of research fields and integrates with major preprint servers such as arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv. Users can create profiles, claim authorship of reviews, and receive credit through persistent identifiers like ORCID. Reviews are searchable and can be filtered by criteria such as expertise, recommendation level, and date. The platform also offers tools for editors to discover reviewed preprints and for institutions to monitor scholarly impact beyond conventional citation metrics.

Preregistration of review protocols, transparent disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, and the possibility of post‑publication updates are core features intended to uphold academic rigor. Funding for the initiative has come from governmental agencies, foundations, and institutional donors, reflecting broader support for open-review practices. While still evolving, prereview has been cited in discussions of reforms to scholarly communication and is part of a growing ecosystem that includes other open‑review services, overlay journals, and community‑curated recommendation systems.