SfN Reviewer Mentor Program

Updated September 2020

The SfN Reviewer Mentor Program is designed to help advanced graduate students, early postdocs, or other SfN members who feel they need more training, to get involved in peer review and to write strong, constructive manuscript reviews. Volunteer mentors will be matched with trainees to do a mentored review.

For more information on the goals of the program, read the editorial by former JNeurosci Editor-in-Chief, Marina Picciotto, who introduced the program. For some insight on the program, you can read two articles featuring comments from participants:

 

Trainee Applications

To participate in the program, please send the following information by email to RMP@sfn.org, with the subject line, “RMP application – [Full name]”:

  • SfN member ID (must be an active member to participate)
  • Link to or citation of one published, peer reviewed article where you served as first author
  • 1–2 sentence description of yourself and your research interests
  • 2–3 preferred mentors with similar research interests from the list of volunteer mentors

Please note that the first-choice mentor may not be available immediately and it may take several weeks to be matched. Trainees generally complete the program within 3 months.

Trainee Expectations

As a trainee, you are welcome to complete the program at your own pace. However, to simulate the reviewer expectations of a real manuscript review, we recommend working through the program according to the following schedule:

  • Week 1: Mentor match process (Average: 5 days).
  • Weeks 1–2: Contact your mentor and decide on a bioRxiv preprint that has not yet been accepted at any peer-reviewed journal.
  • Weeks 3–12: Construct your review and incorporate feedback from your mentor. This process may involve writing several drafts of your review.
  • Weeks 12–15: Once your review is has been approved by your mentor, notify RMP@sfn.org. A Certificate of Completion will be provided at the end of the program.
    • Consider posting your approved review as a comment on the bioRxiv article page with a short introduction: for example, “This review was done as part of the SfN Reviewer Mentor Program (Mentor: [name], Mentee: [name]).”

SfN staff will check in with trainees regularly via email throughout the mentorship to ensure steady progress and active engagement.

 

Resources