Welcome to the new ASAPbio website! See what’s on the roadmap for 2025.
Who we are
ASAPbio is a researcher-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working toward greater transparency and rigor in life sciences research communication.
Our core team may be small (just two full-time employees!) but our reach is immense — thanks to our active community of life scientists, researchers, and related professionals around the world.
History
In 2015, ASAPbio founder Ron Vale published an analysis of the increasing time to first-author publication among graduate students at UCSF, and proposed a more widespread use of preprints in the life sciences as a potential solution. He recruited three fellow members of Rescuing Biomedical Research (Daniel Colon-Ramos, Harold Varmus, and Jessica Polka) to organize a meeting on the topic. Held at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in early 2016, the meeting concluded with broad consensus among attendees (among them researchers, funders, and representatives from journals and publishers) that preprints could productively contribute to the research ecosystem. As follow up from the meeting, ASAPbio began serving as a dedicated organization to coordinate efforts promoting the adoption of preprints in the life sciences.
ASAPbio subsequently received grant funding, incorporated as a nonprofit, and, in 2017, initiated a second area of programming focusing on increasing transparency in peer review.
Financials
IRS 990s:
Reports:
Bylaws:
Community guidelines
We are committed to providing a welcoming and productive experience for all members of our community. Here’s what that means.
Funders
We are deeply grateful for funding from:
We thank our previous funders (The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Open Society Foundations, the Simons, Sloan, Arnold, and Moore Foundations as well as The Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research) and our hosts (the National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Academies, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) for supporting our meetings and activities.
Our vision
We envision a life sciences communication ecosystem where all papers and other outputs are shared rapidly and without restrictions on access or reuse, and open and constructive exchanges take place on research products at all stages.
What we do
ASAPbio brings the life science community together to solve one of the most critical problems in our current research landscape: the increasingly lengthy and opaque process of publishing scientific work.
Science only progresses as quickly and efficiently as it is shared, and in too many ways, the current process is neither quick nor efficient. We know there are better ways to share scientific knowledge — ways that are open, transparent, rigorous, and timely.
With the help of our worldwide community, we’re here to bring about that change.
Our focus areas
2025 strategic direction
Since 2015, ASAPbio has been a strong advocate for open, rapid sharing of research, especially via preprinting. In 2025, we’re continuing our work in this area while also expanding into several new programs based on feedback from our community.
Watch our January 2025 community call to learn more about our strategic direction for 2025.
Our values
Focus on researchers
Rapid open sharing, discussion, and collaboration around research are needed to ensure an ecosystem where scientists can thrive. Researchers should have mechanisms available to openly share their research findings when they are ready to do so, while ensuring that their work is reported accurately and responsibly. To improve the scholarly communication ecosystem researchers must be actively involved in the design, governance, and implementation of new approaches to share, discuss, and evaluate research.
Openness, equity, inclusion, and accessibility
Open availability of research outputs will reduce barriers to the access and reuse of research findings for all researchers and the general public. More open discussion and evaluation will also increase the opportunities for interaction, collaboration, and broad participation by researchers from different communities and backgrounds. Innovation in science communication must actively seek and include the viewpoints of those who have traditionally been underrepresented, including early-career researchers, racially and ethnically minoritized groups, people with disabilities, and those based in low and middle income countries. In order to make publishing infrastructure more accessible and equitable, we value community governance, open source tools and open licenses, sustainability, and transparency.
Respect, empathy, and collaboration
Greater understanding and appreciation of different perspectives will help us to design communication systems that meet the needs of scientists across the world and ensure that we treat each other with humanity in the way that we conduct, evaluate, and disseminate research.
Experimentation and adaptation to evidence
We embrace new ideas and technological innovations, and we will lead experiments that allow us to learn which new approaches best support science and scientists.
