This post originally appeared on The Scholarly Kitchen on 2019-03-26. Cover image via Eddi Aguirre. The design of critical infrastructure determines what its users can do, and when. For example, the New York City subway system carries 1.7 billion passengers annually, shapes centers of residential and commercial activity, and enables a vibrant culture with its late night…
Those who have been following ASAPbio for a while know that journal policies on preprinting are always in flux. As adoption of preprints—and editors’ comfort with them—increase, these changes are typically positive. However, one potential downside to a rapidly-evolving policy landscape is the potential difficulty authors may face in finding their footing, especially when preprint…
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of ReimagineReview, a registry of platforms and experiments innovating around peer review. We now have the technology to experiment with peer review and research evaluation in ways that were not possible decades ago. Many such experiments are already underway—both within the traditional journal system and outside of it—that…
We’re thrilled to share that Naomi Penfold, PhD has joined us as ASAPbio’s new Associate Director, starting today! In this capacity, Naomi will manage and grow the community of ASAPbio ambassadors, create resources to enable advocacy for (and education about) preprints, and drive discussions on best practices. The position is supported by ASAPbio’s newly-formed Member Advisory…
By Jessica Polka (ASAPbio), Donna Okubo (PLOS), and Tim Vollmer (Creative Commons) Today we’re happy to share two new documents that we hope will aid researchers in their decision to share early work as preprints. Even while the practice of publishing preprints continues to grow, we know from our community outreach that there are still…
Preprints in biology have gained incredible momentum over the last few years, with over 2,000 being posted each month. But, in the context of all published papers, these numbers are still tiny: the rate of preprint posting is <3% of the research that is indexed by PubMed. Will the preprinting become the norm only in…
On February 7-9, 2018, editors, publisher, funders, and researchers gathered at HHMI Headquarters in Chevy Chase, MD to discuss innovations in peer review. A clear majority of participants at the meeting agreed that publishing peer review reports (ie, the contents of peer review, whether anonymized or not), would benefit the research community by increasing transparency of…
A July 24 article by Tom Sheldon of the Science Media Centre raised concerns about the use of preprints in the media. Soon after, nine eLife ambassadors (some of which are also ASAPbio ambassadors) responded in a preprint entitled “Maintaining confidence in the reporting of scientific outputs.” Many of the same sentiments are echoed the following…
