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eer review is the defining feature of scholarly communication. In a 2018 survey of more than 11,000 researchers, 98% said that they considered peer review important or extremely important for ensuring the quality and integrity of scholarly communication 1. Indeed, now that the Internet and social media have assumed journals' original role of dissemination, a journal's main function is curation. Both the public and the scientific community trust peer review to uphold shared values of rigour, ethics, originality and analysis by improving publications and filtering out weak or errant ones. Scholarly communities rely on peer review to establish common knowledge and credit. Despite decades of calls for study, research on peer review is scarce 2. Current investigations are fragmented, with few connections and limited knowledge-sharing, as manifested by how sparsely these researchers cite each other's papers 3. The most rigorous work is generally restricted to one or a few journals per study, often in the same field. There is a lack of systematic research on how journals manage the process (such as selecting, instructing and rewarding reviewers, managing conflicting reviews, or publishing reviewers' reports); on how to define the quality and utility of individual reviews; and on how to assess peer review (such as who

The use of preprints for the dissemination of research in some life sciences branches has increased substantially over the last few years. In this document, we discuss preprint publishing and use in the life sciences, from initial experiments back in the 1960s to the current landscape. We explore the perspectives, advantages and perceived concerns that different stakeholders associate with preprints, and where preprints stand in the context of research assessment frameworks. We also discuss the role of preprints in the publishing ecosystem and within open science more broadly, before outlining some remaining open questions and considerations for the future evolution of preprints.

IntroductionTransparent and accurate reporting is essential for readers to adequately interpret the results of a study. Journals can play a vital role in improving the reporting of published randomised controlled trials (RCTs). We describe an RCT to evaluate our hypothesis that asking peer reviewers to check whether the most important and poorly reported CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) items are adequately reported will result in higher adherence to CONSORT guidelines in published RCTs.Methods and analysisManuscripts presenting the primary results of RCTs submitted to participating journals will be randomised to either the intervention group (peer reviewers will receive a reminder and short explanation of the 10 most important and poorly reported CONSORT items; they will be asked to check if these items are reported in the submitted manuscript) or a control group (usual journal practice). The primary outcome will be the mean proportion of the 10 items that are adequately reported in the published articles. Peer reviewers and manuscript authors will not be informed of the study hypothesis, design or intervention. Outcomes will be assessed in duplicate from published articles by two data extractors (at least one blinded to the intervention). We will enrol eligible manuscripts until a minimum of 83 articles per group (166 in total) are published.Ethics and disseminationThis pragmatic RCT was approved by the Medical Sciences Interdivisional Research Ethics Committee of the University of Oxford (R62779/RE001). If this intervention is effective, it could be implemented by all medical journals without requiring large additional resources at journal level. Findings will be disseminated through presentations in relevant conferences and peer-reviewed publications. This trial is registered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/c4hn8).

On January 20 and 21, 2020, ASAPbio, in collaboration with EMBL-EBI and Ithaka S+R, convened over 30 representatives from academia, preprint servers, publishers, funders, and standards, indexing and metadata infrastructure organisations at EMBL-EBI (Hinxton, UK) to develop a series of recommendations for best practices for posting and linking of preprints in the life sciences and ideally the broader research community. We hope that these recommendations offer guidance for new preprint platforms and projects looking to enact best practices and ultimately serve to improve the experience of using preprints for all.