This session’s discussion centered on the benefits of open peer review and how researchers can work together to review preprints. Vanessa Fairhurst and Chad Sansing from PREreview also shared opportunities for learning and teaching within the research community. Some 2024 PREreview Champions Program members also joined us to share their experiences working with PREreview in the African research context in community building for collaborative review processes and their positive impact on science.

Watch the recording

The slides are available at https://africarxiv.ubuntunet.net/handle/1/1655

Key Takeaways

Demystifying Peer Review – Open, collaborative review removes barriers for early-career researchers, fostering confidence and understanding.
Empowering Early-Career Researchers – Live mentoring sessions show that you don’t need to be a journal editor to contribute meaningfully.
Fostering Equity and Diversity – Amplifying voices from underrepresented regions can redefine fair scholarly evaluation.
Building Constructive Feedback Culture – Encouraging supportive, growth-oriented feedback strengthens research communities.
Strengthening Institutional Capacity – Peer review training should be part of African research education.
Joining a Global Network – Engaging with PREreview connects African scholars with worldwide open science advocates.

Speakers’ profiles

Vanessa Fairhurst

Vanessa joined the PREreview team in November 2022. She studied her undergraduate degree in European Languages and Business Management before going on to study her Master’s in Applied and Professional Ethics. She began her career in academia working at international development organization INASP with a focus on improving access to scholarly information and research in developing countries. She then went on to support publishers around the world as Community Engagement Manager at Crossref building a global ambassador team and collaborating with others to ensure that scholarly research metadata is registered, linked, and distributed. Openness, accessibility, and equity have always been central to Vanessa’s work, and she greatly enjoys supporting and empowering researchers to improve the research process in her role as Head of Community at PREreview.

Chad Sansing

Chad joined the PREreview team in late October 2022. Prior to joining PREreview, he worked for the Mozilla Foundation in a variety of roles, most recently as a program manager on the MozFest team. While at Mozilla, Chad worked on several projects including its web literacy curriculum, Open Leadership Framework, Open Leaders program, and community and program management for the MozFest Trustworthy AI Working Group and the Facilitator and Volunteer communities at MozFest. Before that, Chad taught middle school for 14 years and helped found two small public schools for non-traditional learners. He is passionate about helping people discover their individual and shared capacities for social good and positive change. Outside work, you can find him reading, playing games, and hanging out with friends and family.

Dine R. Dzekem

Miss Dine Roseline Dzekem is a public health professional and social scientist in her early career. She has a background in sociology and anthropology from the University of Buea-Cameroon (2016) and a Master’s degree in public health from the University of Rwanda (2019). Her areas of interest have been Sub-Saharan African public health and social issues, such as infectious diseases, healthcare access, community engagement, and mobilization. Roseline created the Rwanda Preprint Club because she is particularly interested in open science and access. Roseline intends to leverage her network and learning opportunities to produce culturally acceptable solutions and enhance health outcomes and scientific communication in African communities by combining her skills in implementation research and community involvement.

Lamis Y. M. Elkheir

Lamis Yahia Mohamed Elkheir is a Lecturer at the University of Khartoum and a Co-Director of the African Reproducibility Network (AREN). Currently finalizing her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry, Lamis also holds a Master of Science in Molecular Medicine and a Bachelor of Pharmacy. She is a dedicated Research Assistant at the Mycetoma Research Center, focusing on pioneering drug discoveries for Neglected Tropical Diseases that heavily impact her community. Lamis’ academic and professional endeavours are driven by her profound commitment to advancing open science and enhancing science communication. She tirelessly works towards bridging the global equity gap in scientific knowledge and fostering an inclusive, accessible scientific community across Africa.

Daniela Saderi

Daniela Saderi is the Co-Founder and Executive Director at PREreview, an open project dedicated to empowering systematically disadvantaged scientists by providing them with enhanced opportunities to find their voice, receive training, and engage in scholarly peer review. Under her leadership, PREreview develops and implements mentoring programs, organizes community events, and builds open-source infrastructure to support thriving academic communities.

Daniela holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA, and a Master’s in Neuroscience from the University of Trieste, Italy. Her extensive experience includes roles as a Mozilla Fellow for Science, focusing on fundraising, community building, facilitation, and program and product management.

Driven by a vision of leveraging collective intelligence in unprecedented ways, Daniela aims to challenge and dismantle systems of oppression such as white supremacy culture, heteronormativity, and patriarchy. She actively encourages innovators to recognize these challenges and collaborate towards transformative societal change.

Ebuka Ezeike

Ebuka Ezeike is a physicist from the Federal University of Technology Minna, in Niger state, Nigeria. With a background in physics and over half a decade of experience as an educator in the field, Ebuka brings a wealth of knowledge to his endeavors. His expertise extends to freelance work, where he delivers writing services, including articles and blog posts. Additionally, he manages two academic podcast shows refining audio and video content, including transcriptions.
Passionate about open science hardware, Ebuka Ezeike has been an active member of the Africa Open Science Hardware (AfricaOSH) and the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH) communities since 2022. In collaboration with GOSH, he organized an impactful open science hardware workshop in 2023, held in Abuja, Nigeria.
Presently, Ebuka serves as the project manager for Access 2 Perspectives, where he coordinates various initiatives, including the African publishing platform AfricArXiv, aimed at enhancing the accessibility of research originating from and about Africa.

How African Researchers and Institutions Can Benefit from Collaborative Preprint Review

In a recent session, participants explored how African researchers and institutions can meaningfully engage with PREreview, a global platform fostering open, collaborative peer review of preprints. While PREreview isn’t a preprint repository itself—a common misconception—it provides a space for researchers to practice and share reviews, gaining skills, recognition, and contributing to scholarly dialogue.

This conversation unpacked practical pathways, challenges, and opportunities for integrating collaborative preprint review into African research ecosystems.

Why PREreview Matters for African Research

Open peer review offers benefits for both authors and reviewers. For authors, it’s an opportunity to receive rapid, community-driven feedback while there’s still time to revise a manuscript before journal submission. For reviewers—especially early-career researchers—it’s a chance to build skills, confidence, and visibility outside traditional, closed-door peer review.

Unfortunately, few institutions currently credit this kind of work in career advancement decisions. Recognizing peer review as a scholarly output could help African researchers gain fair acknowledgment for their contributions.

Learning from African Case Studies

During the session, Roseline and Lamis shared stories of African researchers engaging in collaborative peer review through PREreview. These examples show that when researchers work together in live, guided review sessions, they not only strengthen their technical review skills but also form supportive scholarly communities that transcend borders.

Training and Support for African Researchers

PREreview offers several resources tailored to African contexts, developed in partnership with AfricArXiv, Eider Africa, eLife, and TCC Africa:

Open Reviewers Toolkit – A set of three guides, including a step-by-step framework for writing socially conscious, constructive reviews.
Region-specific materials – Available in English, French, and Arabic under a CC BY 4.0 license on Zenodo.
Workshops – From quick 2-hour sessions to three-part, hands-on programs culminating in a live collaborative review. These workshops are designed for equity, diversity, and inclusion, delivered both online and in-person.
Quarterly community workshops – Free and open to individuals.

Such training can be embedded into university programs to equip the next generation of researchers with practical peer review skills.

Addressing Language and Accessibility Challenges

Language diversity is central to PREreview’s mission. Alongside translated resources, live reviews offer multiple participation formats—speaking during calls, contributing to collaborative documents, or using chat functions. PREreview also works with local Champions to run sessions in different languages and time zones.

For ongoing engagement, researchers can join or create PREreview Clubs—community-led groups united by language, institution, discipline, or geography. Clubs can work online or in-person, synchronously or asynchronously, depending on local needs.

How African Researchers Can Shape the Future of Peer Review

Participation is the key. Joining PREreview is straightforward—researchers only need an ORCID iD to ensure proper attribution for their work. Through its community Slack, design sprints, and open calls, PREreview actively invites members to influence its future direction.

Institutions, too, can help shape a more inclusive scholarly ecosystem by:

Recognizing peer review as a valuable research contribution.
Embedding review training into capacity-building programs.
Encouraging open, transparent feedback practices.

📚 Learn more: PREreview’s website

About the webinar series

This webinar was co-organized by UbuntuNet Alliance and Access 2 Perspectives as part of the ORCID Global Participation Program.

ORCID is the persistent identifier for researchers to share their accomplishments (research articles, data, etc with funding agencies, publishers, data repositories, and other research workflows.

AfricArXiv is a community-led digital archive for African research communication. By enhancing the visibility of African research, we enable discoverability and collaboration opportunities for African scientists on the continent as well as globally.