Journal’s plan to review preprints aims to kill ‘desk rejects’ | Times Higher Education (THE)

"An open access pioneer’s plan to “reshape” peer review, which will see experts evaluate preprints regardless of whether they are due to be published in a particular journal, has sparked debate among academics.

Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of eLife, said that the online periodical would start taking requests to conduct reviews of preprints on the BioRxiv server even if they had not been formally submitted to the title. The reviews themselves would then be posted on BioRxiv for everyone to read.

This would mark a significant shift from the traditional model of peer review, under which submissions are “triaged” by journal staff ahead of potential review by experts, which inform a decision on whether to publish the paper and are shared with the authors only...."