Rapid Reviews\ Infectious Diseases (RR\ID)
Stefano M. Bertozzi, Professor
Public Health
Applications for Spring 2025 are closed for this project.
Rapid Reviews\Infectious Diseases (RR\ID) [rrid.mitpress.mit.edu], is an initiative of the MIT Press and the University of California, Berkeley. It is an open access, rapid-review overlay journal for the accelerated curation and peer review of COVID-19 and emerging infections disease-related research. RR\ID takes a transdisciplinary approach to discuss, curate, and communicate seminal research of public interest.
The RR Editorial Office is composed of senior editorial leadership and five core domains: (1) Biological & Chemical Sciences (2) Physical Sciences & Engineering; (3) Medical Sciences; (4) Public Health and (5) Social Sciences. We have editorial teams based at UC Berkeley as well as in India, Mexico, Vietnam, Rwanda. We plan to expand to at least 8 new countries over the next two years. Each team is led by an associate and assistant editor with domain-specific expertise and is supported by scholars from across the globe. Each week, the core teams meet individually to discuss the most impactful preprints in their domain, and every Friday, all teams meet together to pitch their top choices to the senior editorial leadership.
RR\ID offers a wide range of educational programs for undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, and independent research projects related to academic publishing, peer review, and science communications more broadly.
The primary goals of the project are as follows:
(1) Identify, discuss and curate the most impactful infectious disease-related preprints
(2) Advance selected preprints through peer review – including the identification of the good peer reviewers/review networks
(3) Evaluate limitations and strengths of current peer review and open access publishing models
(4) Innovate new approaches to improve emerging open access publishing models.
(5) Develop relationships with universities in low- and middle-income countries and work with them to develop sister editorial offices to increase the volume of preprints reviewed; to increase the number and diversity of young scholars learning, hands-on, about peer review and academic publishing; to provide networking opportunities among the students and faculty mentors at the 12 universities and Berkeley, and to increase the diversity of peer-reviewers.
If you are interested, please reach out as soon as possible to Stefano Bertozzi, Editor-in-Chief (sbertozzi@berkeley.edu), Hildy Fong Baker, Managing Director (hildy.fong@berkeley.edu), and Boma Levy-Braide, Operations Manager (b.levy-braide@berkeley.edu)
Role: Students will be expected to support the editorial team for the following tasks. The specifics will depend on which core team and sub-project the student works on. Possible assignments may include:
· Identifying, reading, evaluating, and pitching preprints for consideration
· Identifying appropriate peer reviewers for selected preprints
· Supporting the writing original content (i.e. opinion/ perspective pieces)
Students will be expected to learn and apply:
· Strategies for critically evaluating and reflecting on controversial scientific topics, with a focus on high-quality peer-review
· Principles of science communication
· Operational knowledge of scientific publishing
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Hildy Fong Baker, PhD, Staff Researcher
Qualifications: Qualifications: Students should have an active interest in infectious diseases (ID) from any disciplinary perspective and a strong interest in learning how to critically read primary scientific literature. To underscore the “any disciplinary perspective” we are interested in students from the humanities and social sciences interested in vulnerability to or impact of ID on different communities; we are interested in physics students interested in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases; we are interested in management and IEOR students interested in the efficiency of supply chains related to ID, etc. Students are able to focus their efforts on their specific areas of interest (e.g. data science students can identify data science papers related to ID; anthropology students can focus on social and cultural aspects of vulnerability and response to ID, etc.) Experience in data analysis/presentation and communicating technical knowledge to a broad audience are useful but not required. Students should be willing to attend weekly group meetings and relevant editorial meetings. *Please note that we welcome both new and returning URAP students. Please email us if you are a returning RR\ID URAP student–the process is quicker. Expectations will be adjusted based on experience with RR\ID.
Weekly Hours: to be negotiated
Off-Campus Research Site: The work will be largely remote but there will be some workshops in-person.
Related website: https://rrid.mitpress.mit.edu/
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Hildy Fong Baker , Staff Researcher
Hours: to be negotiated
Off-Campus Research Site: The work will be largely remote but there will be some workshops in-person.
Related website: https://rrid.mitpress.mit.edu/
Biological & Health Sciences Digital Humanities and Data Science