Abstract
The skill of analyzing and interpreting research data is central to the scientific process, yet it is one of the hardest skills for students to master. While instructors can coach students through the analysis of data that they have either generated themselves or obtained from published articles, the burgeoning availability of preprint articles provides a new potential pedagogical tool. We developed a new method in which students use a cognitive apprenticeship model to uncover how experts analyzed a paper and compare the professional's cognitive approach to their own. Specifically, students first critique research data themselves and then identify changes between the preprint and final versions of the paper that were likely the results of peer review. From this activity, students reported diverse insights into the processes of data presentation, peer review, and scientific publishing. Analysis of preprint articles is therefore a valuable new tool to strengthen students' information literacy and understanding of the process of science.
Highlights
The advent of online publishing has ushered in new and diverse ways of sharing academic knowledge
These new methods seek to disseminate scientific information more quickly and more directly to scientific researchers, medical practitioners, the lay media, and the general public. They have had a dramatic impact on the traditional publishing and peer review process; examples of changes within the traditional publishing system include the use of open review in which reviewers names and/or comments are included online with the published article [5,6], post-publication peer review [7,8], and a rethinking of the objective and subjective criteria that ought to form the basis for peer review [9]
Students are acting in the role of peer reviewers for the preprint; because most of the preprints were posted on the preprint server within days or weeks of when they were submitted to a research journal, the preprint should be nearly equivalent to a journal article at the time of submission
Summary
The advent of online publishing has ushered in new and diverse ways of sharing academic knowledge. New venues have emerged such as online open-access journals, academically-oriented Twitter feeds [1,2], podcasts [3,4], and the growing popularity of preprint servers. These new methods seek to disseminate scientific information more quickly and more directly to scientific researchers, medical practitioners, the lay media, and the general public.
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