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…
By Chris Pickett Journal peer review is a critical part of vetting the integrity of the literature, and the research community should do more to value this exercise. Biomedical research is in a period of hypercompetition, and the pressures of hypercompetition force scientists to focus on metrics that define success in the current environment—funding, publications…
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…
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…
By Ron Vale, Tony Hyman, and Jessica Polka Summary We propose the creation of a scientist-driven, journal-agnostic peer review service that produces an “Evaluated Preprint” and facilitates subsequent publication in a journal.
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…
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…
by Stephen Curry, Professor of Structural Biology, Imperial College (@Stephen_Curry) As the song goes – and I have in mind the Beatles’ 1963 cover version of Money (that’s all I want) – “the best things in life are free.” But is peer review one of them? The freely given service that many scientists provide as validation…
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,…
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).…
Every month, more and more life scientists are choosing to post a preprint. This decision can give scientists visibility in their field, establish priority of their work in progress, gain recognition by funding agencies, and elicit feedback to improve their manuscript. But once the decision to preprint is made, authors posting to some servers are…
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,…
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…
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…
When questions of general relevance about the requirements and process of the Central Service RFA are received, we will post anonymized summaries of these questions and their answers here. Please direct any additional questions to jessica.polka@asapbio.org. Bidders’ information meetings Audio of February 24th, 2017 bidders’ information meeting. The March 29th 9pm EDT meeting had no participants. Q&A Q:…
Date: Thursday, February 23, 2017 Contact: Jessica Polka | Director, ASAPbio | jessica.polka@asapbio.org ASAPbio, a biologist-driven project to promote the productive use of preprints in the life sciences, has received a $1 million, 18-month grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to develop a new service to aggregate life sciences preprints…
Dear subscribers, Since the summer of 2016, ASAPbio has been iterating on a proposal for a “Central Service” for life sciences preprints, a database that would aggregate preprints from multiple sources and make them easier to access by humans and machines. We explain the benefits of such a service in a recent blog post. Yesterday, 11…
Preprints are complete and public manuscripts with associated data shared before undergoing peer review. Physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists post 100,000 preprints per year to arXiv, a scientist-governed preprint server that has been in operation for over a quarter of a century. Preprints in the life sciences are in a more embryonic stage, with less…
May 10, 2017 update: ASAPbio has announced a four-month suspension of the RFA process to reassess the preprint ecosystem and community needs. ASAPbio is releasing a Request for Applications for the development of a Central Service (provisional name) for preprints in the life sciences issued by ASAPbio. This Request is open to all prospective bidders, and…