Modular Peer Review

Today, peer review is still largely organized around the paper. We are asking a simple question: what would it look like to review the components of research that make up a paper, instead of only reviewing the paper itself?

Trust, evaluation, and feedback can no longer be confined to a single object or a single moment in time. Modular peer review explores how review, verification, and credit can attach to research components, data, methods, code, figures, models, and interpretations, as they are created, reused, and combined.

We work with communities to design and test new approaches to peer review that reflect how research actually happens, while preserving rigor, accountability, and care.

The Modular Peer Review Working Group is co-led in partnership with PREreview, whose work advancing inclusive, community-centered peer review makes them a natural collaborator in this effort.

Why It Matters

Modular peer review opens the door to more precise, timely, and inclusive forms of evaluation, where trust can be built incrementally, expertise can be better matched to what is being reviewed, and credit can flow to the work that actually does the work.

Goals of the group

  • Explore reviewable research components and distinct purposes of review

  • Design and test review flows that operate across components and stages

  • Develop shared language, guidance, and artifacts that can travel across communities

The working group is thoughtfully facilitated, with support from Courtney Babott of Wildly Open.

Modular Peer Review Working Group

A global group of roughly 60 researchers, publishers, librarians, infrastructure builders, funders, and open science organizers, united not by consensus but by momentum. They bring different roles and lived experiences to the shared work of reimagining peer review beyond the paper. The group kicked off their work on January 22, 2026.

Follow Along

Peer Review: Beyond the Paper

  • Session 1: Exposing the Parts

    COURTNEY BABOTT

    In 15 minutes, the paper shrank from destination to a singular waypoint.

    The group’s first chance to roll up their sleeves came with a deceptively simple task: spend 15 minutes in small groups generating an exhaustive list of research components that could be reviewed, evaluated, or given feedback on as an independent component.

    READ SUMMARY

  • A Case Study on Building Codes

    COURTNEY BABOTT

    Moving From One Big Stamp to Modular Approval Pathways

    In construction, trust isn’t earned in a single inspection at the end — it’s built through staged reviews by specialists throughout the process. Our Building Code Review case study investigates how that model works in the real world and what it reveals about designing review systems that are continuous, contextual, and collaborative.

    READ BLOG