EMERGE-PRES peer-review mentoring programme
- Peer-review mentoring is not a part of existing pediatric rheumatology curriculum in most countries.
- The EMERGE-PRES online peer-review mentoring programme aims to fill the current world-wide gap in teaching peer-review skills to young pediatric rheumatology trainees by experienced peer reviewers.
- The objective is to train pediatric rheumatology trainees and help them develop into independent peer reviewers.
How it works:
- Mentee: A mentee is a pediatric rheumatology trainee who wants to learn peer-reviewing skills and is willing to commit dedicated time for the programme.
- Any PRES member who is a pediatric rheumatology trainee can apply to be a mentee.
- There is no cost for enrolling in the program, however the application process is competitive.
- Applications for mentees will be reviewed by the peer-review mentoring committee of EMERGE.
- Approximately 15-18 mentees will be selected based on their research interests, list of existing publications and quality of letter of intent.
- The journal selected for this programme is Pediatric Rheumatology Online Journal (PROJ) which is the official PRES journal. The editors have extended their support for the programme.
- Mentor: Mid and senior level reviewers with PROJ as suggested by the editors will be approached to be mentors.
- Participation as a mentor is voluntary and a commitment of 10-12 hours per month is anticipated.
- 5-6 mentors will be finalized for the first round of the program based on their willingness to dedicate time to the programme.
- Mentors thus selected will be matched to mentees at a ratio of 1:5, based on the research interests.
The actual process:
- The online peer-review mentoring programme will replicate the real-life peer-review process.
- After a journal has submitted a review request to a reviewer (Mentor), the mentor passes on the review article to 5 mentees via email.
- The mentor is also responsible for providing review guidelines to the mentees.
- Each mentee conducts their independent review based on the guidelines and submits it back to the mentor before the deadline indicated by the mentor.
- The mentor then scores the reviews and provides feedback to each mentee to help them improvise for the next review.
- Each cycle consisting of 6 months is expected to provide 3-4 review opportunities for the mentees.
- After 6 months, the mentees will circulate to the next mentor with a different area of expertise.
- There are 3 total cycles consisting of 6 months each. Thus, the entire program lasts for 18 months.
- After each 6-month cycle, the mentor will assess the performance of the mentees. At the end of 18 months, the successful mentees will be issued a certificate of completion.
- Completion of the programme will enable the mentees to get review requests from PROJ and other journals.
- The EMERGE-PRES peer-review mentoring team will provide continuous ongoing support and monitoring to both mentors and mentees to ensure smooth communication.
- We will encourage the mentors and mentees to communicate via video conferencing if feasible to both.
- We will also help arrange an in-person meeting of the mentors with mentees at annual PRES/EULAR meetings.
Programme Launch:
- The anticipated launch of the first cycle of the peer-review mentoring programme is January 2019.
- Call for applications for mentees will be sent out in the first week of October 2018.
- Application deadline for the first cycle is 15 November 2018.
Contact information:
- For mentees: If you are a pediatric rheumatology trainee interested in learning about peer review skills and willing to dedicate 20 hours/month for 18 months please email us with your CV (including list of publications), letter of intent and field of research interest* on emerge.peerreview@gmail.com
- If you are a mid-senior level reviewer with PROJ and are interested in being a mentor for our programme and willing to dedicate 10-12 hours/month of your time please write to us with your research field of expertise at emerge.peerreview@gmail.com
- More details on our social media pages:
*Field of research interest:
For mentees:
Please indicate 3 of the following 6 areas in which you would like to train for peer-review mentoring. Every attempt will be made to match you to a mentor in the research field of interest as indicated by you. If you do not mention at least three areas of interest, we will be unable to process your application.
For mentors:
Please indicate only 1 field of research interest for this programme from the following list. This should be a topic for which you are most frequently invited to review with PROJ.
- JIA and Uveitis
- Basic research in pediatric rheumatology
- Childhood lupus
- Autoinflammatory diseases and JDM
- Vasculitis
- Education in pediatric rheumatology
