F1000: our experiences with preprints followed by formal post-publication peer review

By Rebecca Lawrence & Vitek Tracz, F1000, rebecca.lawrence@f1000.com We have been successfully running a service (which we call platforms, to distinguish from traditional research journals), for over 5 years at F1000 that is essentially a preprint coupled with formal, invited (i.e. not crowd-sourced) post publication peer review. We have consequently amassed significant experience of running…

It’s time to open the black box of peer review

By Jessica Polka and Ron Vale, ASAPbio Opening the content of peer review reports—whether they are anonymous or not—will improve their quality, ensure that ideas that emerge through review are accessible to other researchers, and enable innovation and reform. Peer review is considered an essential standard of scientific publishing. Despite complaints, most scientists feel that…

Peer review as practised at Wellcome Open Research: analysis of Year 1

By Robert Kiley, Head of Open Research, Wellcome Introduction In November 2016 Wellcome became the first research funder to launch a publishing platform for the exclusive use of its grantholders. Wellcome Open Research (WOR), run on behalf of Wellcome by Faculty of 1000 (F1000), uses a model of immediate publication followed by invited, post-publication peer…

APPRAISE (A Post-Publication Review and Assessment In Science Experiment)

By Michael B. Eisen Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley mbeisen@gmail.com, @mbeisen With the rapid growth of bioRxiv, biomedical research is entering a new era in which papers describing our ideas, experiments, data and discoveries are made available to our colleagues and the public without having undergone peer…

Opening up peer review

By Dr. Stuart Taylor, Publishing Director, The Royal Society, London, UK Peer review has been a key part of the research communication system for centuries. Scientists absolutely depend on a research literature that is as reliable, reproducible and trustworthy as possible in order to inform their future work and to help explain other findings. Subjecting…

ASAPbio newsletter vol 11 – Peer review meeting, peer review service proposal, welcome new board members

Dear subscribers, Hope 2018 is off to a great start for you! We have a few exciting announcements: Save the date: Transparency, Recognition, and Innovation in Peer Review in the Life Sciences On February 7-8, tune in to asapbio.org/peer-review to watch a webcast of a meeting we’re co-hosting with HHMI and Wellcome Trust on how…

In Defence of Peer Review

By Tony Hyman and Ron Vale Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden Germany (hyman@mpi-cbg.de) and the University of California, San Francisco, United States  (ron.vale@ucsf.edu) Rapid changes in communication technology have led to sea changes in publication. The days when John Maddox (1) joined Nature and found submitted manuscripts sitting in piles…

Six essential reads on peer review

In preparation for our meeting on Transparency, Recognition, and Innovation in Peer Review in the Life Sciences on February 7-9 at HHMI Headquarters, we’ve collected some recent (and not-so-recent) literature on journal peer review. A full annotated bibliography can be found at the bottom of this post, and we invite any additions via comments. To…

Should reviewers be expected to review supporting datasets and code?

by John Helliwell, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry University of Manchester and DSc Physics University of York (@HelliwellJohn) Introduction For the meeting entitled “Transparency, Reward, and Innovation in Peer Review in the Life Sciences” to be held on Feb. 7-9, 2018 at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland (https://asapbio.org/peer-review) I have been asked by…

New directions for ASAPbio: outcomes of the July 19 workshop

On July 19, preprint service providers, funders, and researchers gathered in Cambridge, MA and via videoconference for a live-streamed ASAPbio workshop about the evolving preprint ecosystem (see video recording and collaborative notes). The goal of the meeting was to assess outstanding needs in light of recent developments, including CZI’s partnership with bioRxiv. At the meeting,…

ASAPbio newsletter vol 10 – Meeting on 7/19, licensing task force

Dear subscribers, The preprint ecosystem is growing rapidly. The CZI/bioRxiv partnership will fuel the expansion of the leading preprint server in the life sciences, and many other servers and platforms with varying degrees of disciplinary overlap exist or are planned (arXiv, PeerJ Preprints, preprints.org, OSF Preprints, ChemRxiv, SSRN, SciELO, PsyArxiv, EngArXiv, SocArXiv, Authorea, F1000Research, etc).…

Requesting your feedback: how should life scientists set standards for preprints?

May 10, 2017 update: ASAPbio has announced a four-month suspension of the RFA process to reassess the preprint ecosystem and community needs.  Preprints (scientific manuscripts that have been posted prior to completion of peer review) allow for the direct exchange of knowledge between scientists. They constitute a global public good that promotes scientific progress. However,…

ASAPbio newsletter vol 9 – NIH encourages the use of preprints, Central Service update, ASAPbio on Twitter

Dear subscribers, It’s been a big month for preprints! NIH encourages preprints On March 24, the world’s largest biomedical research agency released a landmark policy on preprints and other interim research products. The notice states that “The NIH encourages investigators to use interim research products, such as preprints, to speed the dissemination and enhance the…

ASAPbio newsletter vol 8 – Scientific Society engagement, a new grant, ASAPbio retrospective

Dear subscribers, Last month, we held a Town Hall meeting for Scientific Societies at NAS in Washington, DC. The meeting featured presentations by representatives of ASAPbio, NIH, and scientific societies who are innovating with preprints and publishing. More information and a video recording of the meeting is available online. At the meeting, Neil Thakur of…