What is Peer Community in (PCI) Health & Movement Sciences?

Managing board of PCI Health & Movement Sciences​

Editorial policy​

Scope​​​

PCI Health & Movement Sciences​ evaluates preprints and, to a lesser extent, postprints, in all fields of health and movement sciences:

Biomechanics, Exercise Physiology, Exercise & Sports Psychology, Meta-Science, Nutrition, Physical Education, Physical Activity, Health & Disease, Rehabilitation, Sensorimotor Control, Sports Performance. 

PCI Health & Movement Sciences​ recommends preprints of high scientific quality that are methodologically and ethically sound. To this end, PCI Health & Movement Sciences​: 

• Requires that data, computer codes, and statistical analysis scripts be made available to reviewers and recommenders at the time of submission and to readers after recommendation. 
• Welcomes replication studies. 
• Welcomes preregistered studies.
• Welcomes preprints reporting negative results, provided that the research questions and the methods are sound. 
• Does not accept submissions of preprints that present financial conflicts of interest. Other conflicts of interest must be minimal and declared. 
• Ensures, to the extent of possible, that the recommenders and reviewers have no conflict of interest with the content or authors of the study being evaluated. 

PCI Health & Movement Sciences​ does not guarantee to evaluate or recommend all submitted preprints. Only preprints deemed interesting by at least one competent recommender will be reviewed. The interest of the preprint, as determined by the recommender, may be related to its context, the scientific question addressed, the methods, or the results.

Type of articles

The articles recommended may be of different types: reviews, comments, opinion papers, research articles, data papers, technical notes.

Registered Reports should be submitted to PCI Registered Reports.​

Reproducible and open science​

PCI wants to promote scientific reproducibility and reliability to improve the overall robustness and integrity of our scientific conclusions. To this aim, PCI has set up three mandatory rules and makes one suggestion to authors:

Mandatory rules:​

​Articles recommended by PCI must provide the readers with: 

• Raw data must be made available directly in the text or through an open data repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repository (see Directory of Open Access Repositories) with a DOI. Data must be reusable, and the metadata and accompanying text must, therefore, carefully describe the data. ​
• Details on the quantitative analyses (e.g. data treatment and statistical scripts in R, bioinformatic pipeline scripts, etc.) and details concerning simulations (scripts, codes) in the text or through an open data repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repository (see Directory of Open Access Repositories) with a DOI. The scripts or codes must be carefully described such that another researcher can run them. 
• Details on experimental procedures must be given in the text.​

Suggestion to authors:

• ​​​​PCI encourages authors to submit preprints based on preregistrations: Authors may post their research questions and analysis plan to an independent registry before observing the research outcomes, and, thus, before writing and submitting their article. This provides a way of clarifying their hypotheses, avoiding confusing “postdictions” and predictions, and carefully planning appropriate statistical treatment of the data (e.g. see 10.1073/pnas.1708274114).​​​ 

Ethics​

Peer Community In is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In addition:

• Financial conflicts of interest are forbidden, see the PCI code of conduct.
• Authors should declare any potential non-financial conflict of interest.

Postprints

PCI also recommends “postprints”, which we define as research papers that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals. PCI also considers books to be postprints because, despite not being evaluated by reviewers or editors before being published, they are often treated as such by academics. 

As postprints (other than books, see above) have already undergone peer review before publication, an additional PCI peer review is not required for their recommendation. Each postprint recommendation is written by at least two PCI recommenders. Authors cannot submit their own articles or books to a thematic PCI for postprint recommendation. Instead, a postprint recommendation must be initiated by a recommender who has read the postprint and considers it worthy of recommendation. The recommender must then find at least one other co-recommender for completion of the recommendation process.

When a postprint recommendation is published by a thematic PCI, the word “postprint” is printed below the image illustrating the postprint, to differentiate it from preprint recommendations. 

The recommendation text is published with a DOI, but is not accompanied by a peer review or editorial decision.