On May 20, 2016, a Simons Foundation initiative, SFARI, announced that it has changed its policies to support and encourage the use of preprints. The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) recently made two important changes that we hope will help to accelerate the pace of autism research. First, we changed our grant award letter…
A group of attendees of ASAPbio have published a commentary in the “Policy Forum” section of the journal Science on May 20, 2016. Written by scientists and representatives from journals and funding agencies, the paper serves as a meeting report and summary of opinions on the use of preprints in the life sciences. Correction: This paper contains…
Authored by Jo McEntyre and Phil Bourne Goal: To satisfy the fundamental requirements of establishing scientific priority rapidly and cheaply through providing the ability to publish and access open preprints, balanced with the desire to support open science innovation around publishing workflows. Approach: An internationally supported, open, archive (or platform) for preprints as infrastructure is…
Drafted by ASAPbio How can funders help to validate preprints as a mechanism for communication? In a Commentary in Science published on May 20, 2016, co-authors representing several funding agencies recommended: 1) Publishing an explicit statement encouraging researchers to make early versions of their manuscripts available through acceptable preprint repositories. 2) Permitting the citation of…
Drafted by ASAPbio arXiv arXiv is the most directly comparable model in terms of the database content (preprints). Important elements of arXiv’s success are: single point of ingestion and one-stop shopping for viewing (everyone in the physics community wakes up and searches arXiv), high visibility and quality (a reason why scientists submit to arXiv to…
Drafted by ASAPbio At present, biologists submit very few preprints. However, possible growth to the level of arXiv (100,000 submissions/year) or beyond needs to be considered. This will challenge the IT capacity (including robust data back-up) and quality control screening systems of existing servers as well as heighten the need to integrate this information. While…
Drafted by ASAPbio As a public good, preprints should obey a single data standard that will enable them to reside in a single database. This database should be permanent, well-maintained, free for all to use, and easily accessible and searchable. This preprint service should have an outstanding governance structure that will represent the needs of…
Drafted by ASAPbio Preprints are a global archive of knowledge that serves the public good. Here, we hope to discuss and define the basic functions that scientists and funding agencies seek from a Core Preprint Service. We use the term “Core” to define the basic features that meet these goals and might define a “minimal…
Dear ASAPbio subscriber, Last week, we announced the ASAPbio Funders’ Workshop, a small meeting to be held at NIH on May 24th to coordinate support among private and public funding agencies for preprints in biology. Representatives from existing preprint servers will attend, as will some junior and senior scientists. To ensure that the voice of…
On May 24th, 2016, representatives of funding agencies and existing preprint servers as well as junior and senior scientists will meet at the NIH to coordinate their efforts in providing a preprint service for the biology community. The attendees of this small workshop are listed below. — ASAPbio organizers ASAPbio Funders’ Workshop attendees Needhi Bhalla UC Santa Cruz…