A graduate student at the University of Iowa has been named to a pre-print team at a scientific journal.

Beth Osia, a sixth-year graduate student in the Department of Biology, is working with the pre-print team at the peer-reviewed journal Open Biology. The pre-print team comprises early-career researchers with a shared interest in reviewing and communicating new research.

Osia’s thesis work focuses on genome instability and DNA repair. In 2017, Osia joined a similar effort, started by Maurine Neiman, associate professor of biology at Iowa, to solicit and review submitted manuscripts for the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“Though it was a relatively new idea at the time, I felt that a pre-print editorial team would be an excellent opportunity to promote pre-prints as a more integral part of the scientific publishing process and to get some editorial experience,” says Osia, who graduated with a biology degree from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. “When I learned about a similar initiative for Open Biology, I was excited to not only transfer some of the experience I had gained working with the Proceedings B team but also to expand my preprint search to more molecular topics. I’m excited to see pre-prints become a first stop for feedback among so many researchers, and equally so to see journals respond favorably to this trend.”