New Year, updated website – changes that improve clarity and foster collaboration.

5 January 2023

As you may have noticed, some subtle (yet important) changes have been made to the preLights website this month. Earlier this year, we introduced the concept of postLights to allow the comparison between a preLighted preprint and (once published) the peer-reviewed, journal article (see this earlier News post). This means that there are now three different types of comments that can appear in a preLights post: 1) postLight(s), 2) author’s response and 3) community comments. To reflect this, we have introduced new icons (see Fig. 1) that notify readers of the different comments that are available for a certain post. All postLight updates will now appear at the top of the post (see Fig. 2) and preLighters can easily add these themselves (an instructional video will follow soon).

*Fig.1 Icons depicting (from left to right): postLight(s), author’s response and community comment.*

Another thing you may have seen is that – for preLights with multiple authors – a visual carousel now shows the full team, rather than just the preLighter who uploaded the post. To further encourage co-written preLights, a new plugin has been added to the website that will enable multiple authors to work on a post. preLights profile pages will now also highlight previous collaborations to really boost our sense of community.

*Fig.2 All postLights will now appear at the top of the original post (blue box). Also, for co-authored works, a visual carousel will now show the profile pictures of all team members.*

We hope that these changes will help you to navigate the website more easily and that they will foster (and celebrate) collaborations between preLighters. If you have any feedback/comments/suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out!