New Decentralized Editorial Models
July 24, 2025 at 11am ET

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Explore the decentralization of scholarly communication.

This session explores innovative editorial models by platforms like bioRxiv, Review Commons, PCI, Review and Curate Network, Prelights and Sciscore. Discover how these new approaches are transforming preprinting, peer review, and curation, accelerating knowledge dissemination and fostering greater transparency. Our expert speakers will discuss the benefits, challenges, and future potential of these models in shaping a more dynamic and efficient research ecosystem. Learn how decentralized editorial models are empowering researchers and redefining the traditional publishing.

The learning objectives for this 90-minute session are as follows:

• Recognize specific examples and future trends in decentralization from leading open science platforms.
• Identify key benefits and challenges of adopting these new research communication models.
• How these models prioritize collaboration with the goal to speed up scientific advancement.

Speakers

Anita Bandrowski, founder and CEO of SciCrunch, is a researcher in bioinformatics but with an engineering mindset, especially when it comes to rigor and reproducibility issues. In 2010, she defined the problem with antibody reproducibility as “authors not sharing sufficient information in their papers”, which she tried to fix by implementing RRIDs across a broad swath of journals. Anita's approach is, “If I see a problem, I define it well, and then I try to fix the problem”.

Katherine Brown is the Publishing Director at The Company of Biologists and is responsible for a portfolio of five hybrid and Open Access journals in the life sciences field. In this role, Katherine works with in-house staff and academic editors on the strategic directions of the journals from both an editorial and publishing perspective. She also oversees the Company’s preprint-related initiatives, including preLights – The Company of Biologists' preprint highlighting service. Katherine began her editorial career at The EMBO Journal, following a PhD and postdoc in developmental biology, and joined The Company of Biologists in 2011 as Executive Editor of the journal Development – a role she held until earlier this year. 

Richard Sever is Chief Science and Strategy Officer at openRxiv, the non-profit organization that runs the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv, which he co-founded. After receiving a degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University, Richard obtained his PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. He then moved into editorial work, first as an editor at Current Opinion in Cell Biology and later Trends in Biochemical Sciences. Richard subsequently served as Executive Editor of Journal of Cell Science, before moving to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2008. He launched and edited the journals Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology and Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine and was Assistant Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press from 2012-2025. Richard co-founded bioRxiv in 2013 and medRxiv in 2019.  

Roseline Dzekem Dine is dedicated to promoting open science and ensuring equitable access to knowledge. She is the founder of the Review and Curate Network (RCN), an initiative dedicated to enhancing scientific communication in the Global South through the review and curation of preprints. Roseline is a recognized advocate for open peer review and serves as a PREreview Champion for 2025. She also contributes her expertise as a member of the eLife Global South Advisory Committee, where she supports efforts to amplify voices from underrepresented regions in global science.

Thomas Guillemaud is co-founder of PCI. He is a senior scientist at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), where he studies the evolutionary biology of pest insect species.

Thomas Lemberger is Head of Open Science Implementation and Deputy Head of Scientific Publications at EMBO (embo.org) in Heidelberg, Germany. Trained as a molecular biologist, Thomas received his PhD at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and did his postdoc at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He joined EMBO as a scientific editor to launch the open access journal Molecular Systems Biology (msb.embopress.org). He was Chief Editor of the journal for more than ten years. Thomas is leading the development of the preprint peer-review platform Review Commons and is responsible for data and technology initiatives at EMBO Press.

Moderator: Ashley Ketelhut