Hiring: Postdoctoral Fellow on Preprints and Open Peer Review. End of Play: 23 May 2025 | ScholCommLab

• Application deadline: May 23rd, 2025
• Start date: Flexible, ideally starting before July 2025 

Description

The Scholarly Communications Lab (ScholCommLab) at Simon Fraser University is seeking a postdoctoral fellow to join a multi-year research initiative exploring the evolving role of preprints and open peer review in scholarly publishing. This position will support the lab’s broader goal of advancing more equitable, transparent, and sustainable forms of knowledge dissemination.

The postdoctoral fellow will focus on the project’s computational and quantitative research components, analyzing large-scale datasets to examine how scholarly manuscripts evolve through the research and review process, what factors shape the visibility, dissemination, and fate of preprints, and how open peer review is reshaping norms around feedback and revision. 

This work is part of a broader, interdisciplinary collaboration led by Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin that brings together qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore how open publishing practices are being taken up, pushed back against, and reshaped—across disciplines, regions, and institutional settings—and what these changes might signal for the future of scholarly communication.

Research questions may include

• What types of changes occur between preprints, submitted versions, and final published articles—and how do those changes vary across disciplines, publication models, and review formats?
• What are the trajectories of preprints that are never formally published, and what can they tell us about exclusion, gatekeeping, or alternative models of validation?
• To what extent do open peer review reports identify substantive methodological, ethical, or interpretive issues in manuscripts—and what patterns emerge in terms of what gets missed or emphasized?
• How can findings about manuscript changes and review processes be communicated in formats that reach beyond academia—e.g., blogs, data dashboards, public talks, or policy briefs—to support greater accountability in scholarly publishing?

Responsibilities

• Design and conduct original research on preprints and open peer review using quantitative methods
• Analyze preprint metadata, peer review reports, and manuscript versions using techniques such as bibliometrics, NLP, or machine learning
• Collaborate closely with a qualitative researcher and others on the research team to explore overlapping questions from complementary perspectives
• Contribute to the development of frameworks, indicators, or tools for evaluating peer review quality and publishing practices
• Disseminate research findings in both scholarly and public-facing formats, including peer-reviewed journals, blog posts, and presentations on a regular and ongoing basis

Required qualifications

• PhD in information science, computer science, data science, or a related field (completed or near completion) 
• Experience with large-scale data analysis and methods such as bibliometrics, NLP, statistical modeling, or LLMs
• Strong programming skills (e.g., Python, R)
• Familiarity with or interest in scholarly publishing, meta-science, or open science
• Ability to work across cultural, institutional, and/or disciplinary boundaries, with an appreciation for diverse perspectives and practices in research
• Record of scholarly publication with shared data or code
• Commitment to open, transparent, and socially accountable research practices

Preferred qualifications

• Knowledge of preprint platforms, open peer review initiatives, or journal publishing workflows
• Engagement with questions of research equity, transparency, and reform in scholarly communication
• Experience using APIs to work with large-scale scholarly datasets (e.g., Crossref, Scopus, Dimensions)
• Interest in research that informs real-world publishing infrastructure and policy
• A collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to research

What we offer

• Mentorship from leading scholars in scholarly communication (including preprints and open peer review) and open infrastructure
• Active participation in an international network of interdisciplinary researchers across the ScholCommLab
• Close connections to broader communities working on scholarly infrastructure and reform, including the Public Knowledge Project
• A research environment that values lived experience and welcomes scholars from communities historically excluded from academic research and decision-making
• Flexible working arrangements, including the option to work remotely, flexible hours, and accommodations for health or caregiving n