How would you like to help aspiring biologists get their start in the world of scientific publishing?
BioTreks is a high school synthetic biology journal that’s designed to give students hands-on experience with scientific writing and peer review. We do this by encouraging participants to submit and comment on each other’s manuscripts during an annual online event. The students use this feedback to improve their papers, which are eventual published in the journal. Career scientists and educators play a central role in this process by setting the tone for constructive reviews and judging teams on their writing and participation.
Judging takes place online and generally on your own time. This year, judges will have from 31 April to 3 June to review up to four student papers each. As a judge, you’ll also be invited to join students, mentors, and visitors in commenting on the papers during an online conference from 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM ET on 6 May. Following the event, you’ll evaluate the students on their writing and peer review skills so that teams can be recognized for outstanding performance on different aspects of scientific publishing.
We’re looking for career educators, scientists, and graduate students to make this year’s BioTreks conference a rewarding experience for our young authors.
We’ll be assigning judges to papers to Judges on 1 May so please apply now. Judging BioTreks manuscripts is a fun and rewarding experience, which will only take 4-8 hours of your time, spread over a four-week period!
Use the following form to offer your help or learn more about the program.