Meredith Schmehl, PhD
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meredithschmehl.com
Meredith Schmehl, PhD
@meredithschmehl.com
Neuroscientist supporting #OpenScience @HHMI.org

Connecting science & society through #SciPol, #SciComm, & community building for a more equitable & informed future

Past:
📢 Comms @ National SciPol Network
🧠 Ph.D. @DukeBrain.bsky.social
🧬 B.S. x2 @CMU.edu
Also agreed! If authors are deciding when to publish, as they are in the case of preprints, there is likely also room to decide that certain papers/outputs don’t need formal peer review. Ideally there would be room for both transparent peer review and standalone outputs that don’t need that process.
August 12, 2025 at 2:03 AM
Whether those peer review coordinators should be journals, preprint review services, or something else...is a question that can only be answered with broader conversations. But the conversation starts with the question of how we ensure we aren't only seeing peer reviews of pre-curated content.

4/4
August 12, 2025 at 12:33 AM
A more transparent model might make all outputs accessible (i.e., open access articles, preprints) while also having service providers that coordinate peer review and ensure the outputs of peer review (i.e., reviews, author responses) are made accessible. More science discourse out in the open.

3/4
August 12, 2025 at 12:32 AM
eLife is a good step, but they still only publish what they review.

There's an opportunity to consider whether peer review and curation for publishing must be linked. Preprints open doors to transparent review without curation, but this means thinking differently about how review occurs.

2/4
August 12, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Agreed! No intent to diminish the role of journals as a coordinator of peer review.

But when the coordinators of peer review are also the deciders of which papers (and, therefore, which peer reviews) get seen, we end up with biased curation - no insight into what is reviewed but not published.

1/4
August 12, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Plus services like @prereview.bsky.social which decouple the peer review process from journals altogether! HHMI has supported this model for many years (doi.org/10.1371/jour...), and we have some new ideas - can’t say more just yet 🙂
A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences
This Perspective article proposes new practices for scientific publishing that align better with today's digital environment than do legacy practices.
doi.org
August 11, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Meredith Schmehl, PhD
Describing intelligence as a capacity, or a skill, means that it can be developed and taught: it's not something that one just has. PhD level intelligence represents the highly refined skills of PhDs to see what is in light of what can be, which is ultimately necessary to do the dissertation.
August 9, 2025 at 8:52 AM