Photograph of Victoria Yan wearing a white sweater and navy blazer in front of a landscaped campus, with a glass building in the background

Laying the foundation for preprints at EMBL – an interview with Victoria Yan

Victoria Yan started her preprint advocate journey as the Project Coordinator for ASAPbio’s ReimagineReview. She is now an Open Science Research Information Specialist at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany. In the following interview, we discuss how EMBL is promoting the use of recognition of preprints from an institutional perspective. How do preprints fit into the bigger…

Read more
We're hiring

Job posting: Executive Director of ASAPbio (deadline Feb 19)

Join us to make scholarly communication in the life sciences more open and efficient by catalyzing cultural change in scholarly communication, for instance around the use of preprints and other interim research products, transparent review, and other innovations! About ASAPbio ASAPbio is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working toward a vision of a life sciences communication…

Read more
Scientists sat around a table reviewing preprints with snacks inlcuding apples

Apply for support in converting your journal club to a preprint review club

Traaditional journal clubs are present in most labs and departments bringing together early career researchers to discuss and review a chosen article. These groups effectively perform peer review but often don’t share the comments with the authors. This year ASAPbio is launching a fund to support current journal clubs in performing (and sharing) peer reviews…

Read more
Composite image of individual smaller screens displaying different 2023 fellows waving to the camera

2023: Another successful year for the ASAPbio Fellows

In 2023 we progressed 38 people through the third installment of the ASAPbio Fellows program. Together this group participated in cohort calls to provide fundamental knowledge and training around preprints in addition to multiple projects, which we celebrate here.  Awareness of preprints in Africa The adoption of preprints across the globe has not been equitable,…

Read more

Publishing and preprints as part of graduation requirements across the globe

Introduction Since the launch of bioRxiv in 2013, preprints have seen an explosion in use and adoption across the life sciences. Preprints now represent ~10% of the biomedical literature and are seeing increasing recognition across funding bodies, policy makers, academics and universities in promotion and hiring decisions. However, this adoption and recognition is not globally…

Read more
Poster advertising a community call with a photo of Lonni Besancon

The trials and tribulations of post publication peer review; Recap from November Community Call

In our November 2023 community call, we heard from Lonni Besancon (Assistant Professor, Linkoping University) about his work exposing fraudulent and unreliable science.  Lonni began with an overview of how he started researching reliability issues and highlighted that this is not his primary role; indeed, it is a large issue in the current system that…

Read more
Plan S logo and text reading "towards responsible publishing: a proposal from cOAlition S" against an orange background with an image of a staircase

20 minute action: provide feedback on a funder proposal that would support preprints & open review

Take cOAlition S’s survey by the November 29th deadline to support a new model of publishing cOAlition S, an initiative of more than 2 dozen national funders and charitable organizations, has recently released the “Towards Responsible Publishing” proposal. The two key features of this proposal, as stated in an introductory blog post, are: 1. Authors,…

Read more
A presenter delivering slides projected onto a screen in front of an audience

Building a technological foundation for preprint review

The practice of preprinting in the life sciences has grown rapidly. In addition to accelerating scientific publication, preprinting also has the potential to open new avenues of communication among researchers. For example, preprint peer review offers tremendous potential for changing the culture of scientific assessment, broadening participation, and enhancing the robustness of scholarship. While only…

Read more

Spreading preprint awareness locally: growing the Hubs program

Culture change happens within communities. While virtual programs like the ASAPbio Fellows and Community calls link preprint enthusiasts across continents, nothing beats face-to-face interactions. So, as in-person events picked up earlier this year, we created a new program to support discussions about preprints; the ASAPbio Local Hubs program with three community leaders. Here, two of…

Read more
close up photograph of a diamond

EU council ‘no pay’ publishing model is realistic

This post originally appeared on Olivier Pourret’s blog and in Indonesian on Dasapta Erwin Irawan’s blog. Authors According to Katharine Sanderson, “publishing-industry representatives warn” that May’s EU Council call for a “no pay” academic publishing model is “unrealistic and lack[ing] detail”. However, the proposal is already being implemented via several approaches:  (i) Authors can publish their work…

Read more
A padlock with Sec 552 overlaid on it

Support free and immediate access to research results by opposing Section 552

Everyone should have free and immediate access to research results, especially when they are publicly funded. Preprints are one way to share papers immediately and without cost to authors and readers, but much of the peer reviewed literature is still behind paywalls. The 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, also known as the Nelson…

Read more

Driving recognition of preprints in research assessment: recap from the ASAPbio July Community Call

Our fourth Community Call of 2023 featured a discussion about the use of preprints in research assessment. The adoption of any product or innovation requires the presence of appropriate incentives and preprints are no different. Academia is driven by research and researcher assessment; from funding bodies awarding grants, hiring committees assessing potential new faculty members…

Read more
grid of cartoon faces representing crowd review participants

Crowd preprint review is back! Sign up to participate in one of several groups led by ASAPbio Fellows 

Interested in honing your peer review skills while providing valuable feedback to preprint authors? Then join one of our preprint review crowds!  Following our two previous cycles of preprint review activities, we are thrilled to announce that ASAPbio will host more crowd preprint review activities in 2023. This year our crowd preprint review activities will…

Read more

Sharing negative results via a preprint: A conversation with Livia Songster

This is the third in our series of posts highlighting the winners of the ASAPbio competition ‘Make your negative result a preprint winner,’ which celebrates the value of using preprints to share negative and inconclusive scientific results. In this post, we hear from Livia Songster (University of California San Diego), the first author of the preprint ‘Woronin…

Read more

Sharing negative results via a preprint: a conversation with Lilya Andrianova

This is the second in our series of posts highlighting the winners of the ASAPbio competition ‘Make your negative result a preprint winner,’ which celebrate the value of using preprints to share negative and inconclusive scientific results. In this post, we hear from Lilya Andrianova (University of Exeter Medical School & University of Glasgow), the first author…

Read more
Midjourney-generated image of scientists talking holding papers with speech bubbles above them

“Advancing the Culture of Peer Review with Preprints” – a Call to Action

Today, we’re happy to share a preprint written by a subset of the participants in December’s Recognizing Preprint Peer Review Meeting hosted by ASAPbio, HHMI and EMBO. It’s an exciting time for preprint review, with new services, models, and policies providing the foundation for a growing ecosystem. At the same time, the diversity in the…

Read more
midjourney-generated illustration of an open book with flasks and biologically-themed patterns springing from it

ASAPbio’s response to the NIH Plan to Enhance Public Access

Last month, the US NIH released a Request for Information (RFI) for feedback on its planned implementation of last year’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directive to make all US federally-funded research immediately publicly accessible.  In addition to ensuring that “publications resulting from NIH-supported research are made available in PMC without…

Read more

Announcing the winners of the ‘Make your negative result a preprint winner’ competition

We are pleased to announce the winners of the ASAPbio competition ‘Make your negative result a preprint winner’, which aimed to highlight the value of sharing negative and inconclusive scientific results via preprints. We know that science advances through a persistent exploration of research questions and approaches, and that this brings with it the fact…

Read more

ASAPbio preprint policy toolkit for funders

Preprints help to improve the overall quality, integrity and reproducibility of research outputs, as highlighted in UNESCO’s recommendations on open science. Preprint adoption is increasing across scientific disciplines and geographies thanks to the involvement of multiple players, including researchers, publishers, institutions, societies, and funders. Funders can significantly influence, and benefit from, the preprint landscape by…

Read more

Fostering local preprint communities: announcing the ASAPbio Local Hubs

ASAPbio hosts a global community and we regularly organize online events and activities for audiences across the world. At the same time, we recognize that in-person interactions can be invaluable for developing new relationships and the deeper engagement needed for change in science communication. To support and amplify the work that community members do in…

Read more
NASA TOPS logo with "let's talk open science" next to it

ASAPbio joins NASA TOPS

ASAPbio is thrilled to join the Transform to Open Science (TOPS) initiative, a NASA project “designed to rapidly transform agencies, organizations, and communities to an inclusive culture of open science.” TOPS is also part of US White House’s Year of Open Science.  Quoting the TOPS website, the initiative’s four goals are to: How ASAPbio is…

Read more

Insights about the use of preprints in Japan and China: recap from the ASAPbio January Community Call

Our first Community Call of 2023 hosted a discussion about the use of preprints by communities in East Asia. While there has been increasing use of preprints in the last few years, trends so far suggest that communities from different geographical regions are at different stages of adoption. An analysis of bioRxiv preprints by Abdill…

Read more
Recognizing Preprint Review journals and preprint review projects working group recommendations

Recommendations on Recognizing Preprint Review from the ASAPbio Journals & Preprint Review Projects Working Group

In advance of the Recognizing Preprint Peer Review meeting in December 2022, ASAPbio convened two Working Groups of different stakeholders to articulate the added value of incorporating preprint review into assessment processes, catalog potential uses of preprint review as part of assessment processes, develop working definitions for preprint review according to the needs of different stakeholders and discuss how…

Read more
Funder researcher institution working group recommendations

Recommendations on Recognizing Preprint Review from the ASAPbio Funder, Researcher, and Institution Working Group

In advance of the Recognizing Preprint Peer Review meeting in December 2022, ASAPbio convened two Working Groups of different stakeholders to articulate the added value of incorporating preprint review into assessment processes, catalog potential uses of preprint review as part of assessment processes, develop working definitions for preprint review according to the needs of different stakeholders and…

Read more

Do you have a preprint in progress and want constructive feedback? Submit it for discussion at the ASAPbio-PREreview live-streamed preprint journal clubs

Preprints provide a great avenue for researchers to get feedback on their work from the community. This type of community feedback is particularly valuable when gathered on early preprints, that is, on manuscripts that are still work-in-progress, prior to their submission for journal publication. The feedback from the community can allow authors to get a…

Read more

Survey points to key two challenges with preprint feedback: recognition and trust

In preparation for the Recognizing Preprint Peer Review workshop, ASAPbio integrated input from two working groups to prepare a survey for researchers, funders, and journal editors and publishing organization employees. The survey sought to gather views and experience with preprint feedback and review from a broad range of stakeholders, to help inform the conversations at…

Read more

‘Open science and preprints’ lecture at the University of Belgrade – Raising awareness about preprints in the Serbian community

Post by ASAPbio Fellow Ana Đorđević On 2 December 2022, the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Belgrade (Serbia), hosted a lecture concerning open science and preprints. The event was supported by ASAPbio and aimed to raise awareness around preprints and their place within open science among the local Serbian researchers, and to encourage this…

Read more

How journals are innovating in peer review through preprints

Image reproduced from Biogeosciences Post by ASAPbio Fellow Aditi Sengupta Preprints are increasingly becoming a tool to support the peer-review process and aid rapid dissemination of research results. The increased transparency in the review process that preprints can support has been welcomed by many journals with many pivoting to an environment of supporting preprints. A…

Read more

Recommendations for managing preprints in generalist and institutional repositories

As adoption of preprints has grown over recent years, researchers have made use of a variety of platforms to share the early drafts of their manuscripts. In addition to the existing preprint servers, there are also many institutional or generalist repositories where authors can deposit their manuscripts – Zenodo, for example, lists over 6,000 records…

Read more

ASAPbio crowd preprint review 2.0 – highlights from our 2022 activities to collaboratively develop public preprint reviews

Last year we ran a trial where we experimented with translating the crowd review model pioneered by the journal Synlett to preprints, and we coordinated activities to develop public reviews on cell biology preprints. The activities resulted in sign up by over 100 researchers, and in 14 public preprint reviews developed through comments contributed by…

Read more

The ASAPbio Fellows program: an interview with 2022 Fellow Ruchika Bajaj

ASAPbio wants to support community members who want to learn more about preprints and share information and resources about preprints with their own communities. To empower our community members to be preprint advocates, we started a Fellows program in 2020, a dedicated set of activities around preprints that allows participants to learn more about preprints,…

Read more

Why do journals engage with preprints? We talked to editors and this is what they told us

Post by ASAPbio Fellow Kasturi Mahadik Throughout the year, groups of researchers, librarians, and other scholars are not only learning more about preprints but also unearthing various outlooks towards preprints through the ASAPbio Fellows program. As part of our activities in the program, some of us are interested in discovering the various perspectives that journal…

Read more

Want to drive conversations about preprints in your own language? Reuse & translate preprint resources

ASAPbio aims to provide researchers with information and resources that can help them make productive use of preprints. Our Preprint Resource Center hosts materials such as videos, the Preprint FAQ and a wonderful set of preprint infographics developed by ASAPbio Fellows, which you can find at asapbio.org/preprint-info#infographics. We want to ensure that communities with different…

Read more

‘Preprints and open science’ workshop – Raising awareness about preprints in Sudan

Post by Ehssan Moglad On July 19, the Medicinal and Aromatics and Traditional Medicine Research Institute, National Center for Research, in Khartoum (Sudan), hosted a workshop about preprints and open science. The event was sponsored by ASAPbio and aimed to raise awareness around preprints among the local community of researchers, help them build skills about…

Read more

How to promote equity in the visibility, curation and evaluation of preprints? – Key takeaways from the ASAPbio Community Call

Post by Anna Drangowska-Way Whether a preprint will get noticed depends on many factors. Ideally, the quality or the relevance of its scientific findings will be of primary importance, but this is not always the case.  There are many disparities in how preprints (and science in general) get attention. One of the most obvious of…

Read more

Three takeaways from our July 19 Publish Your Reviews event

View translations on the SciELO blog: Español | Português What are the benefits of open peer reviews on preprints, and why should researchers consider publishing their journal-invited reviews alongside preprints? To answer these questions, ASAPbio Fellows Bianca Trovò, Nicolás Hinrichs, Saeed Shafiei Sabet, and Susana Henriques organized an interactive conversation about the recently-launched Publish Your…

Read more

Research assessment and preprints in India: Workshop summary

Post by Yamini Ravichandran On June 7th ASAPbio hosted a workshop in collaboration with IndiaBioscience and Open Access India, to discuss preprints and the value they can add to research assessment frameworks in India. ASAPbio works to drive open and innovative communication in the life sciences and promotes the productive use of preprints. IndiaBioscience aims…

Read more

Supporting public preprint review through collaborative reviews – an update on ASAPbio’s crowd preprint review

At ASAPbio we believe that there are many benefits to public preprint feedback: comments that can help authors improve their work, opportunities for early career researchers to develop review skills, and further context for non-specialized readers, among others. Since last year, we have been supporting this important activity by coordinating public reviews on preprints developed…

Read more

Welcoming four new members to the ASAPbio Board of Directors

We’re thrilled to announce four new members of the ASAPbio Board of Directors: Gautam Dey, Carole Lee, Kleber Neves and Ludo Waltman. These appointments allow the Board to incorporate new perspectives from researchers in a wide range of disciplines including meta-research and also broaden the geographical representation in our Board.  Gautam Dey  orcid.org/0000-0003-1416-6223 Gautam is…

Read more

Research assessment frameworks in India: Assessing the role of preprints

Tuesday, 7 June 2022 5-6:30pm Mumbai Preprints are increasingly used, but we know that their use varies widely across geographical regions (Abdill et al.). The countries where the use of preprints is most widespread overlap with those where funding organizations and institutions have signaled support for preprints for the dissemination of research works. India is…

Read more
Banner announcing Review Commons policy update

New policy: Review Commons makes preprint review fully transparent

In a major step toward promoting preprint peer review as a means of increasing transparency and efficiency in scientific publishing, Review Commons is updating its policy: as of 1 June 2022, peer reviews and the authors’ response will be posted by Review Commons to bioRxiv or medRxiv when authors transfer their refereed preprint to the first affiliate journal. By Thomas…

Read more
Crowd preprint review banner - faces of

Become a crowd preprint reviewer and support public feedback on preprints

Following our successful trial last year, we are thrilled to announce that ASAPbio will pursue crowd preprint review activities in 2022. Join us in supporting public feedback on preprints by becoming a crowd preprint reviewer! We are expanding the activities to include different disciplines. In addition, we are delighted to collaborate with SciELO Preprints to…

Read more
Logos of participants in the ASAPbio preprint reviewer recruitment network

Preprint reviews & comments enabled journals to find dozens of new reviewers & editors

In our 6-month trial of the Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network, participating journals made 124 total additions to their reviewer databases; they also extended 28 invitations to review and 62 invitations to advisory or editorial boards. We plan to extend the program into a second phase. Many early-career researchers want to get involved with journal peer…

Read more

Preprints in Motion, a podcast discussing exciting new preprints with their early-career authors

By Jonny Coates (@JACoates) & Emma Wilson (@ELWilson92) Podcasts have exploded in popularity in recent years, with over 504 million people listening to podcasts across the world, representing an exciting avenue for scientific communication. Similarly, preprints have seen unprecedented usage and become a vital conduit to sharing scientific findings during a global pandemic. Although a…

Read more

The next three years of ASAPbio: expanding culture change, supporting preprint review, and broadening the use of preprints

We’re delighted to announce that we will be continuing our work on preprints and open peer review through 2024 with a combined $250,000 per year in funding committed from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and the Simons Foundation. This generous support will sustain ASAPbio’s mission to accelerate discovery in the…

Read more

Survey: how early would you preprint and what feedback would you like?

During the pandemic, research communication and progress has accelerated through the massively increased posting of preprints. The increased use of preprints is a positive development, however, most preprints still take the form of traditional research papers posted shortly before or in parallel to their submission to a journal. As a result, preprints generally appear 4…

Read more

Now open: applications for the 2022 ASAPbio Fellows program

We’re thrilled to open applications for the 2022 ASAPbio Fellows program. Interested in a deep dive into the preprint landscape? Seeking to drive forward your own preprint initiative? Then join our Fellows program!  The ASAPbio Fellows program aims to provide participants with resources, tools and contacts to allow them to drive discussions about the productive…

Read more

Delving deeper into preprints in institutional and generalist repositories

As open scholarship practices grow, dedicated preprint servers are springing up in many disciplines. However, researchers are also depositing preprints in other platforms, including institutional and generalist repositories. These destinations can be familiar to researchers and well-integrated into the scholarly communications infrastructure, but many do not presently offer the same preprint-related features found in purpose-built…

Read more

Preprint highlight: “A Guide to Preprinting for Early Career Researchers”

Post by Cassandra Ettinger and Madhumala Sadanandappa The ASAPbio Fellows program offered by ASAPbio is an excellent opportunity for graduate students, postdocs, and information professionals to learn and become engaged with preprints. Through the 2021 Fellows program, we interacted with researchers across different career stages from various countries and learned about their experience and familiarity…

Read more

FAST principles for a thriving preprint feedback culture

Post by Sandra Franco Iborra and Iratxe Puebla While preprints have been adopted as a means to promptly disseminate research, they also open up new ways to participate in the scientific discourse around the latest research. There are many benefits to public feedback on preprints: comments that can help authors improve their work, broader opportunities…

Read more

Announcing the winners of the preprint communication competition

We are pleased to announce the winners of the first ASAPbio preprint communication competition, which aimed to communicate to a wide audience the value proposition of preprints as a tool for research communication. Preprints played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic, speeding up the dissemination of scientific findings that led to a quicker understanding…

Read more
PREreview Logo

Partnering with PREreview to host a live preprint journal club

ASAPbio’s Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network aims to help researchers, especially ECRs, break into reviewing or editing roles by sharing their comments and reviews of preprints as examples of their work.  Comments and feedback to preprints can occur in many forms. We are partnering with PREreview to host a live-streamed preprint journal club, an opportunity for…

Read more

‘It’s good for you and it’s good for the science’ – The impact of preprints for early career researchers webinar recap

On October 6, we gathered virtually for a lively discussion about the benefits of preprints for early career researchers. The event was an initiative by the ASAPbio Fellows Keti Zeka, Nafisa Jadavji, Gabriela Nogueira Viçosa, Osman Aldirdiri and Eider Valle Encinas. Through this webinar, the Fellows aimed to raise awareness about preprints but also provide…

Read more

‘How to peer review’ workshops for the Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network

ASAPbio’s Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network aims to help researchers, especially ECRs, break into reviewing or editing roles by sharing their comments and reviews of preprints as examples of their work. We recognize that people have diverse backgrounds and prior experiences in peer review. To assist researchers in the Network in developing their expertise with writing…

Read more

Everything early career researchers should know about preprints – join our panel discussion on October 6

Wednesday, 6 October 2021 9am Los Angeles | 12pm New York | 1pm São Paulo | 5pm London | 9:30pm Mumbai | 12am Hong Kong The use of preprints is growing in the life sciences. Preprints help researchers worldwide to accelerate dissemination of research findings to the scientific community, but how exactly can preprints be…

Read more

Introducing Preprints and Publishing in the Life and Biomedical Sciences: a course on preprints and the journal publication process

Blog post by Iratxe Puebla and the ASAPbio Fellows Tara Fischer, Gautam Dey, Jonny Coates, Aleksandra Petelski, Vanessa Bortoluzzi & Gilbert Kibet-Rono A key step in the research process is the communication of researchers’ work to the scientific community. Preprints can bring many benefits to science communication, but the inner workings of the publication process…

Read more

Urging the Australian Research Council to revise its preprint policies

We sent the list of signatories below to the ARC on September 3, 2021. The Australian Research Council (ARC) does not allow researchers to cite preprints in their grant applications and recently disqualified a number of applications for this reason.   Preprints advance scientific discovery and are encouraged by many funders, including Australia’s National Health and…

Read more

Tackling information overload: identifying relevant preprints and reviewers

The growth of preprints in the life sciences has amplified earlier concerns about the challenges of keeping abreast of the latest research findings. Researchers need to keep up to date not only with the most recent publications in journals but also with the latest scholarly work posted on preprint servers. Three quarters of the respondents…

Read more

Curation and review in the preprint landscape

By Victoria Yan At the ASAPbio #FeedbackASAP meeting held on July 21st, 2021, the Sciety team (Hannah Drury, Godwyns Onwuchekwa, and Paul Shannon) led an interactive session examining different aspects of the evolving landscape of preprint curation and review.  What is curation? We began the session by brainstorming what curation encompasses. Through a mind-mapping exercise,…

Read more

Considering campaigns to post journal reviews on preprints

As part of the July 21, 2021 FeedbackASAP meeting, Ludo Waltman (CWTS, Leiden University), James Fraser (UCSF), Cooper Smout (Free Our Knowledge) organized a breakout session entitled “Posting journal reviews on preprints” to identity an evolutionary bridge between a system based around journal-organized peer review and referred preprints. Peer reviewing: for whom and why? The…

Read more
Formal education in reviewing manuscripts is rare Source: McDowell et al. Co-reviewing and ghostwriting by early-career researchers in the peer review of manuscripts. eLife 2019;8:e48425.

Public preprint review as a tool to empower the next generation of socially-conscious peer reviewers

By Rebeccah Lijek and Jessica Polka At the July 21, 2021 #FeedbackASAP meeting, Mugdha Sathe (UW), Rebeccah Lijek (Mount Holyoke), Daniela Saderi (PREreview) organized a breakout session on using public preprint review in teaching and mentorship of early career researchers.  Who is a “peer?” The session began with Daniela Saderi leading us in discussion about…

Read more
Breakout session Miro board

How to foster a positive preprint feedback culture: From FAST principles to implementation

2022-01-13 update: The FAST principles have now been posted as a preprint. As Chris Jackson pointed out in the first session of #FeedbackASAP, preprint feedback is part of the collaborative culture of science. A positive culture of comments and review of preprints brings many benefits to the scientific process, but what does this culture look…

Read more
Stock photo of a person arranging sticky notes in an office environment

Developing a taxonomy to describe preprint review processes

By Victoria Yan 2022-01-27 update: This work has now been completed. Please see our blog post announcing PReF. Why develop a preprint review taxonomy? Dozens of projects organizing peer review of preprints are active or being developed. In this landscape full of new possibilities, differentiating among innovative forms of preprint review is challenging. Furthermore, these…

Read more

ASAPbio preprint communication competition – help us communicate preprint science to the public

Are you keen to show your passion for science and preprints to the non-scientific community? Got an aptitude for writing or showcasing visual art? If this sounds like you, we’re looking for you! Our preprint science communication competition seeks to find new ways to engage and reach out to the general public. Organized by the…

Read more
ASAPbio Preprint Reviewer Recruitment network featuring logos of Review Commons, GigaScience, GigaByte, PeerJ, Proc B, JCB, MBoC, PLOS, eLife, and SAGE

Announcing the Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network

Today, we’re excited to launch the Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network, a pilot to share researchers’ preprint reviewing experience with journals looking for reviewers or editorial board members.  Public preprint feedback has the potential to not only help authors and readers, but also to identify potential reviewers and editorial board members for journals. Unfortunately, finding preprint…

Read more
FAST principles board

FAST principles to foster a positive preprint feedback culture

2022-04-27 update: The principles are the focus of a Point of View article in eLife. 2022-01-13 update: The FAST principles have now been posted as a preprint. As Ivan Oransky has noted, ‘science is a proposition and a conversation and an argument’ [1]; feedback and discussion around scientific reports are integral parts of the scientific…

Read more

Announcing #FeedbackASAP speakers

We’re thrilled to announce the speakers for the July 21 #FeedbackASAP meeting! These individuals will discuss why public preprint feedback is needed and what institutions and societies are doing to support it in two plenary sessions at the beginning of the meeting. Time in UTC (duration) Title Description  15:00 (5’) Welcome Kickoff and announcements 15:05…

Read more
Yearly preprints/all-papers in Microsoft Academic Graph, trend by domain, reproduced from Xie B, Shen Z, and Wang K 2021 [8]

Addressing information overload in scholarly literature

Blog post by Christine Ferguson and Martin Fenner Information overload is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue, and is generally associated with the excessive quantity of daily information. – Wikipedia [1] Information overload is a common problem, and it is an old…

Read more
Review commons Extended Scooping Protection: Preprint posted, protected at 17 journals

Review Commons implements new policies on preprints and extended scoop protection

This post originally appeared on the Review Commons blog. Review Commons is announcing two new policies today: As of August 1, 2021, Review Commons will require all authors to post their manuscript as a preprint, prior to transfer to an affiliate journal1. In return, all the affiliate journals provide authors with scooping protection from the date of posting of the…

Read more

Identifying shared technology needs for preprints in the life sciences

Today, we’re excited to release a report on shared technology needs for preprints in the life sciences. This represents the culmination of six months of work with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Open Science Program to map missing technologies to enhance preprint-based collaboration and innovation.  Preprints in biomedicine have come a long way in a few…

Read more

Why do some researchers have reservations about preprints? – ASAPbio March Community Call recap

The ASAPbio Community is a global and diverse group of researchers and other stakeholders in science communication. While they bring varied expertise and opinions, they all share an interest and support for the use of preprints. Our Community members had expressed interest in hearing a broader range of perspectives about preprints, beyond the pro-preprint views…

Read more

Resources for preprints in the public eye

Today, as described in Project Coordinator Jigisha’s Patel opinion piece in The Scientist, we’re pleased to share a series of resources and guidelines emerging from our work on the representation of preprints to broad audiences. These infographics summarize more detailed documents drafted by working groups who considered how to preprint servers, researchers, institutions, and journalists…

Read more

#PreprintsInThePublicEye Twitter poll results!

Last week we ran Twitter polls for preprint servers, research institutions, researchers and journalists to provide feedback on the outcomes of the Preprints in the Public Eye project. The project aim is to encourage the responsible reporting of research to avoid its misrepresentation or misinterpretation. The project involves stakeholders representing researchers, institutions, preprint servers, publishers…

Read more

From a “Forgotten Experiment” in the 1960s to today: Clinical Preprints in the Light of History

Post by ASAPbio Fellow Aleksandra Petelski The usage of preprints in the clinical world is drastically increasing, especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this rapidly developing situation, medRxiv already received over 8,000 preprints (and counting) involving COVID-19 at the current time of writing [1].  The use of preprints as a means for science dissemination…

Read more

Recapping the #PreprintSprint

On December 4, 2020, ASAPbio hosted #PreprintSprint presentations, where 16 projects (down from the 21 presented at the kickoff, partially due to mergers and collaborations) updated approximately 100 attendees on what they had accomplished during the sprint. During the 20 days of the sprint, 9 projects started new collaborations, 14 updated their proposal to incorporate feedback,…

Read more

What we learned at the ASAPbio webinar on “The past, the present and the future of Preprints”

Blog post by ASAPbio Fellows Bradly Alicea, Marco Fumasoni, Yamini Ravichandran & Sarah Stryeck The ASAPBio Fellows program supports early-career researchers and those interested in topics related to the intersection of open science and scientific communication in becoming a resource about preprints for their communities. As part of the program, one working group of Fellows…

Read more
Preprint Sprint Kickoff group photo

Kicking off the #PreprintSprint

On Friday, 2020-11-13, 100 participants gathered at the #PreprintSprint Kickoff to workshop 21 ideas for encouraging more feedback on preprints. While the bulk of the event was spent in breakout sessions, the introductory lightning talks can be found below. Slides can be found here. Project leads are currently integrating ideas and feedback received at the…

Read more

Clinician’s Corner: How might preprints benefit sharing clinical trial results?

Blog post by ASAPbio Fellow Suraj Kannan The recent emergence of preprints in clinical research (most prominently through medRxiv) has raised a number of questions about their potential for benefit/harm. Preprints and preprint servers have existed in various basic and hard science disciplines for the past several decades, and have improved speed of dissemination and…

Read more

The Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium

Organized by: Emily Gurley, PhD and M. Kate Grabowski, PhD; Johns Hopkins University Website or social media links https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/ Current stage of development ongoing project Project duration 1-2 years with longer term potential Project aims Background information on current practices The 2019 Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium (NCRC) is a centralized, publicly available resource that rapidly curates…

Read more

Encouraging preprint review: make it easier to create reviews, make it easier to incorporate reviews.

Organizer Nokome Bentley, Alexander Ketchakmadze & Colette Doughty from Stencila Website or social media links https://stenci.la/ https://twitter.com/stencila Current stage of development Ongoing project Project duration 1 – 3 months for integrations described here as part of Stencila’s ongoing development Update Our aim for the #PrePrintSprint was to use it as an opportunity to add reviewing…

Read more

Towards principled metrics of scientific influence with automatic curation of preprints.

Organizer Thomas Lemberger, EMBO Website or social media links https://eeb.embo.org Current stage of development EEB is an experimental platform under development and used as sandbox to test ideas about aggregation and human- or machine-mediated curation of preprints. It is linked to EMBO Press and ASAPbio’s Review Commons journal-agnostic preprint review platform and to the SourceData…

Read more

Early Evidence Base: aggregating, mining and rendering preprint reviews.

Organizer Thomas Lemberger, EMBO Website or social media links https://eeb.embo.org https://reviewcommons.org Current stage of development EEB is an experimental platform under development and used as sandbox to test ideas about aggregation and mining of refereed preprints. Project duration 3 years How has your project changed? In view of the feedback received we have decided to…

Read more

Peeriodicals

Organizer The PubPeer Foundation, represented by Brandon Stell and Boris Barbour Website or social media links  https://peeriodicals.com @peeriodicals Current stage of development Ongoing project Project duration Indefinite Update How has your project changed? No changes. Have you integrated any feedback received? We received a useful suggestion to provide case studies for specific Peeriodicals applications to…

Read more

Open post-publication peer review

Organizer Victor Venema, Grassroots Review Journals, University of Bonn, Germany Website or social media links Concept homepage Development server GIT Future integrations Mastodon Twitter Reddit Current stage of development Main design for the communities (review journals) is ready to be implemented. Multiple communication channels set-up apart from a newsletter/distribution list.  Project duration Years, but for…

Read more

Building capacity for preprint peer review and curation in Africa

Organizer Ms Joy Owango (TCC Africa) and Ms Jo Havemann (AfricArXiv) Website or social media links https://www.tcc-africa.org/​ ​ https://info.africarxiv.org/ Joy Owango: ​joy.owango@tcc-africa.orgJohanna Havemann: ​info@access2perspectives.com​ // ​jo@africarxiv.org Current stage of development AfricArXiv is an Open Access portal launched in June 2018, which serves primarily as a preprint repository. Beyond that it serves as a hub and…

Read more

COVID 19 Rapid Review: A joint publishers’ initiative to engage the community on the review of COVID-19 preprints

Organizers  Daniela Saderi (PREreview Co-Founder and Director) and Sarah Greaves (STM Publishing Consultant) Website or social media links OASPA announcement Project website Digital Science Blog Post: “Does creating a rapid reviewer pool improve trust in COVID-19 peer review?” Digital Science Blog Post: “Creating a rapid reviewer pool…..and trying to use it” Poster (Zenodo) Current stage…

Read more

I Owe The Academy: Portable Tokens for Open Peer Review

Organizer Philip N. Cohen and Micah Altman Website or social media links philipncohen.com micahaltman.com Current stage of development  Ready to be implemented Project duration 2 years Update Have you integrated any feedback received? concept of a ‘market’ for peer review clearly resonated with a number of commentator which stimulated a number of reflections on the…

Read more

Harnessing cross-institutional journal clubs to assess and review preprints

Organizer Felix Richter (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford) Nicolas Vabret (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York) Website COVID-19 Literature Review Oxford COVID-19 Mount Sinai References: 1 Vabret N, Samstein R, Fernandez N, Merad M; Sinai Immunology Review Project; Trainees; Faculty. Advancing scientific knowledge in times of pandemics. Nat Rev Immunol.…

Read more

Transforming Peer Review through Mentorship and Community Engagement

Organizer PREreview: Antoinette Foster, Monica Granados, Samantha Hindle, Katrina Murphy, Daniela Saderi Simply Secure: Georgia Bullen, Carissa Yao Website or social media links  https://prereview.org  https://twitter.com/PREreview_ https://github.com/prereview Current stage of development Ongoing / idea Project duration 2 years Update How has your project changed? The Sprint confirmed that our project roadmap is developing along the right…

Read more

Unfold Research

Organizer Dragan Okanovic Website or social media links unfoldresearch.com twitter.com/UnfoldResearch Current stage of development Ongoing project Project duration first phase – 8mth, additional phases – 4yrs+ Update Since the Kickoff, the project’s architecture was mostly rethought, both at the backend implementation side as well as UX side. How has your project changed? It hasn’t changed…

Read more

bims: Biomed News

Organizer Directed by Gavin McStay (Staffordshire University), founded by Thomas Krichel (Open Library Society) Website or social media links http://biomed.news Current stage of development Ongoing Project duration Indefinite Project aims Bims is a rapid dissemination system for new papers in PubMed. Bims is powered by human selectors acting as machine teachers.How does this benefit preprints? We expect that PubMed will increase…

Read more

Putting peers at the heart of peer review

Organizer Life Science Editors (Helen Pickersgill, Angela Andersen, Marie Bao, Carol Featherstone, Shawna Hiley, Sabbi Lall, Li-Kuo Su) Website or social media links www.lifescienceeditors.com Current stage of development  Idea Project duration Indefinitely Update How has your project changed? We introduced an additional option to incentivize authors to initiate peer review. As an alternative to requesting…

Read more

Piloting peer review overlay services on a distributed network of preprint servers and repositories

Organizer Kathleen Shearer and Paul Walk, COAR; Herbert Van de Somple, DANS; Martin Klein, Los Alamos National Lab along with several other partners from the repository, preprint and peer review services Website or social media links Current stage of development  Ready to be implemented Project duration 2 years Update Since the kickoff, it was affirmed…

Read more

CrowdPeer

Organizer Louis Fisher and Huw Williams (CrowdPeer) Website or social media links www.thecrowdpeer.com https://twitter.com/crowdpeer Current stage of development Ongoing Project Project duration Indefinite Update How has your project changed? Added a code of conduct to guide intended use. Added reviewer guidance section describing what comments are expected within the comments section. Further developed reviewer recognition…

Read more

Take a Penny, Leave a Penny

Organizer Chris Baur, Marek Łaska, Chrissy Prater, Michele Avissar-Whiting (Research Square) Website or social media links https://www.researchsquare.com/ Current stage of development  Idea Project duration 6-month trial Update Since the Kickoff, we have thought through 1) what a minimal viable product looks like for demonstrating proof of concept and 2) how to concretize what started out…

Read more

Leveraging Smart Citations as Preprint Commentary and Review

Organizer Josh Nicholson, co-founder and CEO of scite Website or social media links https://scite.ai/ twitter.com/scite Project duration Ongoing project Project duration Indefinitely Project aims Overview of the challenge to overcome Reviewing and curating preprints openly at scale is challenging.  The ideal outcome or output of the project Implementation of the scite Smart Citation badge (https://scite.ai/badge)…

Read more

Preprint review and curation by content type

Organizer Daniel Mietchen, School of Data Science, University of Virginia, @EvoMRI Project status ongoing Project duration ongoing Project aims Background Peer review of preprints typically has two main components (a) general comments on parameters like the quality, scope, topicality or structure of the manuscript and (b) comments on details, e.g. inaccuracies, missing references, confusing plot parameters,…

Read more

Call for proposals to encourage preprint curation and peer review

Community feedback on preprints makes rapid science more robust. Review and commentary can help authors improve their articles; curation can provide readers with helpful context and enhance discoverability. But despite the benefits, barriers to reviewing and curating preprints remain. Potential reviewers and curators see few incentives to organize and comment on preprints, and reviews can…

Read more

Welcoming new officers of the board

We’re thrilled to announce a new team of leaders on the ASAPbio board! Effective September 30, 2020, Prachee Avasthi (Associate Professor, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth) will serve as President, James Fraser (Professor, UCSF, and previously ASAPbio Secretary & Treasurer) as Vice President, Iain Cheeseman (Member, Whitehead Institute; Professor of Biology, MIT) as Treasurer,…

Read more

Welcome to Clinician’s Corner

A series aimed at opening the dialogue surrounding preprint usage in the clinical community. Run by the ASAPbio Fellows Vanessa Bortoluzzi, Kirsty Ferguson, Suraj Kannan and Aleksandra Petelski. Today, scientific discovery moves at a faster pace than even a decade ago [1]. However, the publishing process required by journals does not seem able to keep…

Read more

Evaluating Review Commons – the first 9 months

2021-10-18 correction: In the original version of this post, the data labels for “accepted” and “rejected” re-review rates were swapped. The correct labels now appear below. In late 2019, EMBO and ASAPbio launched Review Commons, a platform for journal-independent peer review that facilitates the posting of a refereed preprint and submission to 17 partner journals.…

Read more

Preprint abstracts should be open: why we joined the I4OA stakeholder group

We’ve proud to join the stakeholder group of the Initiative for Open Abstracts, a sister project to Initiative for Open Citations. Making abstracts openly available and machine-readable helps readers discover relevant research. For more on why this is important, see this explainer.  Open abstracts are important for preprints as well as published journal articles. The…

Read more

Systematize information on journal policies and practices – A call to action

By Willem Halffman, Serge Horbach, Jessica Polka, Tony Ross-Hellauer, and Ludo Waltman Crossposted from Leiden Madtrics Recently the creators of Transpose and the Platform for Responsible Editorial Policies convened an online workshop on infrastructures that provide information on scholarly journals. In this blog post they look back at the workshop and discuss next steps. In…

Read more

Newsletter vol 27: Join the #PreprintReviewChallenge, Review Commons webinar, and more

Join the #PreprintReviewChallenge: Help us create the largest collection of preprint reviews in a day On September 22, ASAPbio will be hosting an online live preprint review event as part of Peer Review Week 2020. We will get together to write constructive comments and reviews on preprints, with the aim to develop the largest collection to date of…

Read more

Announcing Doc Maps: a framework for describing editorial events

Today, we’re happy to announce a collaboration with TU Graz and the Knowledge Futures group on Doc Maps, a project to create machine-readable ways to describe peer review & editorial processes on articles. As preprints undergo screening checks and pick up peer review from an increasing number of third party sources, it’s becoming more challenging to know…

Read more

Review Commons webinar: Journal-independent Peer Review in the Life Sciences

Tuesday, September 8, 2020  12pm New York | 9am San Francisco | 5pm London | 6pm Berlin | 9:30pm Mumbai About half of biomedical articles are submitted to more than one journal, leading to repeated peer review and publication delays. Review Commons is a free, journal-independent peer review service that allows you to transfer your…

Read more

Newsletter vol 26: Benefits and concerns about preprints, August Community Call, #biopreprints2020 report and more

Perceived benefits and concerns about preprints – initial survey results  We had 546 responses to our survey about the perceived benefits and concerns around preprint – our thanks to everyone who shared their views. We will be taking a deeper dive into the data over the coming weeks but here are some initial takes from the responses: Main perceived…

Read more
Survey overview

Preprint authors optimistic about benefits: preliminary results from the #bioPreprints2020 survey

With contributions from Kathryn Funk, Alice Meadows, Alex Mendonça, Oya Rieger, and Sowmya Swaminathan After our #bioPreprints2020 meeting, a working group of attendees set out to understand how to best increase awareness about preprints among varied groups of stakeholders (such as librarians, journalists, publishers, funders, research administrators, students, clinicians, and more). To accomplish this goal,…

Read more

Comparing journal-independent review services

Preprinting not only accelerates the dissemination of science, but also enables early feedback from a broad community. Therefore, it’s no surprise that there are many innovative projects offering feedback, commentary, and peer reviews on preprints. Such feedback can range from the informal (tweets, comments, annotations, or a simple endorsement) to the formal (an editor-organized process…

Read more
Preprint stickers on a table with a post-it note that says "I screen preprints"

Open for feedback: #bioPreprints2020 meeting report

In late January, ASAPbio, in collaboration with EMBL-EBI and Ithaka S+R, hosted the #bioPreprints2020 workshop to improve the discoverability, reuse, and interoperability of preprints in the life and biomedical sciences. After the meeting, attendees formed working groups to establish draft recommendations for preprint metadata, withdrawal and removal definitions, data availability statements, versioning, and surfacing review…

Read more

Improving peer review through research

By Victoria Yan This post originally appeared at ReimagineReview, a registry of innovative peer review projects. Here on ReimagineReview, we envision the constant improvement of peer review through experimentation and research. With concurrent research and outcome reporting, the projects we list have the potential to demonstrate whether their approach has improved peer review. The collective…

Read more

Newsletter Vol 25: Take our survey, open peer review trends, meet the ASAPbio Fellows & more

Share your views about preprints – take the surveyASAPbio and the attendees of the #biopreprints2020 workshop are looking to get community feedback on the perceived benefits and concerns around preprints. We are seeking perspectives from a wide range of stakeholders involved in research communication to better understand how preprinting is perceived across stakeholder groups and research disciplines. Complete…

Read more
Image advertising a 5-minute survey: your views on preprints, for researchers, readers, funders, journal editors, and more

What are the benefits and challenges of preprints? Share your views

This survey is closed and preliminary results are available here. While the use of preprints has increased over the last years, preprint awareness and attitudes vary widely across research communities and among stakeholders in research communication. Stakeholders interact with preprints to varying degrees, via different channels and for different purposes; a better understanding of what…

Read more

Newsletter vol 24: Preprints on Pubmed, community call, hiring for temporary role, #ShutDownSTEM

Preprints are in PubMed On the topic of preprints, “how do I find them?” remains one of the most common questions. While several search tools already index preprints, many require researchers to look outside of their normal workflows.  On June 9, the National Library of Medicine announced a pilot to include NIH-funded preprints in PubMed and PMC beginning this week.…

Read more

Preprint FAQ refresh

When we first launched our Preprint FAQ in 2016, the biology preprint landscape looked dramatically different from its present form, both in terms of its usage and prominence among researchers as well as its integration into scholarly communication workflows. While we’ve made periodic updates, the whole package was due for a refresh. We’ve been honored…

Read more

Newsletter volume 23: Hello from Iratxe, COVID-19 preprint resources, increased visibility for journal review & preprint policies

Dear all, May has been a busy month for ASAPbio, we have launched new resources related to preprints, and continued to engage with many colleagues in conversations about transparency in peer review and open science; details below. Hello from Iratxe Earlier this month I joined ASAPbio as Associate Director. I am thrilled to be part of…

Read more

Transpose data reused by Clarivate to increase awareness of journal peer review and preprinting policies

Transpose is a community database of journal policies on peer review and preprinting developed with major contributions from ASAPbio. Launched almost a year ago after a sprint at the 2018 Scholarly Communications Institute, Transpose includes information on whether peer review is blinded, transparency of reviewer identities and reports, co-reviewing policies, versions of papers that can…

Read more
COVID-19 preprints per week

ASAPbio resource for preprints and rapid communication of COVID-19 research

In efforts to tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, research related to SARS-CoV-2 as well as the public health and societal ramifications of COVID-19 is taking place faster and on a larger scale than ever before. Researchers are making use of preprints to freely and quickly disseminate COVID-19 research, and a significant proportion of research related…

Read more

Welcoming Iratxe Puebla as ASAPbio’s Associate Director

We’re thrilled to announce that Iratxe Puebla has joined ASAPbio as our new Associate Director! In this role, Iratxe will develop our newly-announced ASAPbio Fellows program, spearhead community engagement, and create resources and tools that foster awareness of preprints. Following a background in biochemistry research, Iratxe moved into open access editorial roles, first at BMC…

Read more
Screengrab of video chat with ASAPbio community

Newsletter vol 22: Now launching the ASAPbio Fellows program

Today, we’re thrilled to announce the ASAPbio Fellow program – a six-month program structured to provide participants with tools and skills to drive discussions about the productive use of preprints in the life sciences, and to become ASAPbio representatives at their institutions or scientific conferences. New on the blog New resource: a directory preprint server policies…

Read more

Discouraging citations to predatory journals could be counterproductive

Predatory journals, as defined by COPE in a thoughtful discussion document, are those that operate for profit in a “deceptive or fraudulent way and without any regard for quality assurance.” These journals undermine trust in science by enabling the dissemination of flawed work under false banners of quality. Recently, ICMJE and COPE made recommendations to…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 21: COVID-19 webinar, new board members, open access RFI

Webinar: Rapid communication of COVID-19 research Tuesday, March 31, 12pm-1:30pm ET (9am PT, 5pm BST, 6pm CEST – see in your time zone) Join ASAPbio and the Knowledge Futures Group for a conversation about new ways of sharing scientific information relevant to the coronavirus pandemic via preprints, rapid peer review, and more. Individual talks will…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 20 – #bioPreprints2020, Review Commons updates, and more meeting reports

Dear subscribers, I hope 2020 is treating you well! Since our last update, we’ve been working on a variety of meetings and conference sessions. Here are the highlights. #bioPreprints2020: Building trust in preprints On January 20 and 21, 2020, over 30 representatives from preprint servers, publishers, funders, and organizations working on standards, indexing, and metadata…

Read more

Thanks, Naomi!

Over the past 15 months or so, I’ve been privileged to work closely with Naomi Penfold to advance preprinting in the life science. Now, as she heads to eLife as their Community Manager, I wanted to thank her for some of the incredible work she’s done at ASAPbio. Together with Jamie Kirkham and Fiona Murphy,…

Read more
the 32 participants are gathered outside in front of Hinxton Hall

Building trust in preprints together

On January 20 and 21, 2020, over 30 representatives from preprint servers, publishers, funders, standards, indexing and metadata infrastructure organisations, and beyond, gathered at EMBL-EBI to develop ambitious but achievable recommendations for metadata and processes that would improve the discoverability, reuse, and interoperability of preprints in the life and biomedical sciences.

Read more

Preprints and ethical publishing practice: COPE’s Discussion document as a stepping stone to best practice guidelines

By Iratxe Puebla, Facilitation and Integrity Officer, COPE The use of preprints in the life sciences has increased over recent years and has sparked a number of conversations about their use, as well as their potential benefits and challenges. It is fair to say that there are differing views around preprints; while some communities use…

Read more

Reimagining review in a world of preprints

At the 2019 ASCB|EMBO cell biology meeting, we convened researchers, funders, publishers, and advocates in a panel discussion focused on making use of peer review on preprints.  The use of preprints in the biomedical sciences has been increasing exponentially in recent years as it is becoming a common practice in research dissemination.  Free from journal brands, preprints enable innovations…

Read more

[CLOSED] Job posting: advance the use of preprints and transparent review in the life sciences as Associate Director at ASAPbio

This posting is closed. Join us to help make scholarly communication in the life sciences more open and efficient by catalyzing cultural change around the use of preprints, transparent review, and other advances in scholarly communication! About ASAPbio We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that got its start in 2015 as a grassroots group of researchers…

Read more

Community call recap: revealing quality of peer review through increased transparency

The theme of Peer Review week in 2019 was quality in peer review. However, the quality of most reviews are obscured to researchers because traditional peer review processes are conducted behind closed doors. We identified five active approaches to improving peer review quality through increased transparency and brought practitioners of each together in a community…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 18 – Review Commons is coming soon!

Dear subscribers, This month, we share upcoming opportunities to learn, discuss, and influence the future of preprints and transparent peer review. Coming soon: Review Commons We’ve partnered with EMBO to launch a new journal-independent platform that peer-reviews research papers before submission to a journal. Review Commons will provide authors with a Refereed Preprint (using bioRxiv’s…

Read more

Take part in eLife’s Research Practice Survey

“We’re inviting researchers across the life and biomedical sciences to help us paint a clearer picture of research practices today. With your input, we will explore which open science practices are becoming established across disciplines and geographies, and which other methods of conducting and communicating research are standing the test of time.” https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/018e6b91/research-practice-survey-an-invitation-to-take-part The familiarity…

Read more

EMBO and ASAPbio to launch a pre-journal portable review platform

A multi-publisher partnership aims to streamline scientific publishing by producing refereed preprints  Heidelberg and San Francisco—September 30, 2019—EMBO Press and ASAPbio have partnered to create Review Commons, a platform that peer-reviews research manuscripts in the life sciences before submission to a journal.   Papers submitted to Review Commons, which will be launched in December 2019,…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 17 – Revealing quality in peer review & considering influencers of preprint success

Dear subscribers,  This month, we share upcoming opportunities to learn, discuss and influence the future of preprints and transparent peer review. Peer review week event: ReimagineReview community call on revealing quality in peer review through increased transparency The theme of this year’s Peer Review Week, “quality in peer review,” should resonate with anyone—author, referee, or…

Read more

ReimagineReview community call: Revealing quality in peer review through increased transparency

September 20, 9am PDT, 12pm EDT, 6pm CEST The theme of this year’s Peer Review Week, “quality in peer review,” should resonate with anyone—author, referee, or reader—invested in the process of formal publication. But how can those without a direct window into the peer review process be assured of its quality, both the entire body…

Read more

Job posting for a new journal-independent peer-reviewing platform

As part of preparations to launch a new journal-independent peer-reviewing platform in collaboration with ASAPbio, EMBO has recently posted a job ad for the position of Managing Editor. EMBO is seeking a highly motivated scientist with broad and international high-level research experience […] The platform will produce high-quality portable peer-reviews that can be directly used…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 16 – Bias in peer review & new research to understand preprint adoption

Dear subscribers,  This month, we present opportunities to discuss bias in peer review and share our latest research activities about preprints. We hope you’ll join us at upcoming events and discussions. Discuss bias in peer review with ReimagineReview Scientific peer review is ideally based solely on the merit of the research; in the real world,…

Read more

To preprint or not to preprint? Research for a more transparent publishing system

This blogpost is cross-posted from the ScholCommLab blog (Alice Feerackers, July 29 2019) and provides an update on a current research project by two visiting scholars supported by ASAPbio. “For researchers, there is immense pressure to publish in journals that are highly competitive,” says Naomi Penfold, associate director of the scientist-driven nonprofit ASAPbio. “[This, in turn,]…

Read more

NIH CSR reiterates to study section reviewers that preprints may be cited in applications

The Center for Scientific Review (CSR), National Institute of Health are working to improve awareness of the NIH policy (NOT-OD-17-050) that encourages citation of preprints in grant applications and reports. In response to feedback submitted by ASAPbio on May 30, Kristin Kramer, Ph.D., at the Office of Communications for the CSR, stated (June 11, 2019):…

Read more

Launching Transpose, a database of journal policies on preprinting & peer review

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Transpose (@TransposeSCI), a database of journal peer review, co-reviewing, and preprint policies relating to media coverage, licensing, versions, and citation. These policies can often be difficult to find, unclear, or undefined. Our hope is to bring them to light so that authors, readers, reviewers, and other stakeholders…

Read more

Just published: examining the breadth of journal preprint policies in TRANSPOSE

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…

Read more

Launching ReimagineReview, a registry of peer review experiments

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…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 14 – New team members, calling all preprint platforms & peer review experiments, preprint licensing

Dear subscribers, It’s been a while! Here’s what’s been keeping us busy: New team members We’re delighted to welcome five new people to the team! From left to right: Phil Bourne (Professor, University of Virginia), Jennifer Lin (Director of Product Management, Crossref), and Kristen Ratan (Co-founder and Executive Director, Collaborative Knowledge Foundation) have joined the…

Read more

Welcoming Naomi Penfold as ASAPbio’s Associate Director

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…

Read more

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

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…

Read more

Comparing quality of reporting between preprints and peer-reviewed articles – a crowdsourced initiative

By Olavo B. Amaral Institute of Medical Biochemistry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil As the preprint movement gains traction in biology, the time is ripe to revisit some aspects of scientific publication that we view as fundamental – first and foremost of which is the peer review process itself. Common concerns about preprints…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 12 – peer review meeting summary, preprint survey, and collecting commenting venues

Dear subscribers, This month, we summarize a recent meeting on peer review and present two requests: Support for open reports (signed or not): summary of the HHMI/Wellcome/ASAPbio Peer Review meeting On February 7-9, 2018, a group of approximately 90 junior and senior scientists, publishers, editors, and funders convened at HHMI Headquarters in Chevy Chase, MD…

Read more

How to launch a transformative and sustainable forum for publication and scholarly critiques of research in the life sciences?

By Harinder Singh Director, Division of Immunobiology and the Center for Systems Immunology Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center This perspective is a result of the various insightful commentaries that have been posted on the ASAPbio site in the context of the HHMI/Wellcome/ASAPbio meeting on “Transparency, Recognition and Innovation in Peer Review in the Life Sciences.”…

Read more

New Forum for Peer Reviewed Research in the Biomedical Sciences

By Harinder Singh, Division of Immunobiology and the Center for Systems Immunology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Motivation Although major research advances are rapidly being made in the biological and biomedical sciences, the communication of these findings is hampered by existing publication forums. Despite the large and expanding number of journals, there are considerable limitations,…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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,…

Read more

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).…

Read more

New developments and plans for the Central Service RFA and Governing Body

Funding agencies are crucial to the development of the preprint movement. The adoption of preprints by the life sciences community has been accelerated by grant-making policies that recognize these manuscripts as a valid form of scholarly communication. Investments in preprint infrastructure, services, and technologies are thus necessary to build capacity for growth. The latest strong support…

Read more

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,…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

RFA questions

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:…

Read more

ASAPbio awarded $1 million from Helmsley Charitable Trust for next-generation life sciences preprint infrastructure

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…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 7 – Funders sign onto principles for preprint development, RFA released, scientific society town hall

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…

Read more

The Benefits of a “Central Service” for Biology Preprints

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…

Read more

RFA

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…

Read more

Principles for establishing a Central Service for Preprints: a statement from a consortium of funders

At the ASAPbio Funders’ Workshop, representatives from a number of funding agencies asked ASAPbio to “develop a proposal describing the governance, infrastructure and standards desired for a preprint service that represents the views of the broadest number of stakeholders.” Following iterative discussions about the technical and organizational aspects of such a project, ASAPbio is now…

Read more

Societies clarify positions on preprints in grants

Following increased interest in may scientific societies’ positions on the use of preprints in NIH grant applications, several societies have released statements providing their perspectives. ASCB The ASCB leadership, after careful consideration, believes preprints should be able to be included in grant applications and referenced in NIH progress reports, with the proper references so they…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 6 – One quick action this week to support preprints

Dear subscribers, We need your help for an urgent action this week. The NIH released a RFI (request for information) on “including preprints and interim research products in the NIH applications and reports.”  ASAPbio, and many individual scientists, responded with arguments in favor of providing scientists with the option, not requirement, of citing preprints in NIH applications/reports as public evidence…

Read more

ASAPbio response to FASEB’s statement on the NIH RFI on preprints

1/19/2017 update: We will close the signature drive at 9pm EST on Sunday, 1/22/2017. Summary The NIH released a RFI (request for information) on “including preprints and interim research products in the NIH applications and reports.”  ASAPbio, and many individual scientists, responded with arguments in favor of providing scientists with the option, not requirement, of…

Read more

Preprint journal clubs

For authors, one of the most exciting potential benefits of preprints is the ability to attract early feedback from broad and diverse sources during the preparation of a scientific manuscript. Preprint journal clubs can provide this input – and a more meaningful review experience for their own members as well. Here are some examples and resources for setting them up. Prachee…

Read more

Update on development of a Central Service Request for Applications (RFA)

At the ASAPbio Funders’ Workshop in May of 2016, representatives of funding agencies requested that ASAPbio “develop a proposal describing the governance, infrastructure and standards desired for a preprint service that represents the views of the broadest number of stakeholders.” Toward this end, we proposed a model for a “Central Service” (CS) that would aggregate…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 5 – Tell the NIH what you think about preprints, Crossref service launches today, new resources

Dear ASAPbio subscriber, Tell the NIH what you think about preprints The NIH has recently released a request for information (RFI) on the use of preprints and other interim research products. We encourage all interested parties to respond to the RFI using the submission website by the deadline of December 9th (extended from November 29th).…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 4 – Technical workshop, new website features, ambassadors

Dear ASAPbio subscriber, Here’s what’s new: We held a successful Technical Workshop to discuss the feasibility of creating a central preprint service. All the notes are online, and you can also view the archived video stream. We’re working on a request for information to identify potential suppliers, their implementation strategies, and their predicted costs and…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 3 – REQUESTING FEEDBACK on a central preprint service for biology

Dear ASAPbio subscriber, It’s been an exciting few months at ASAPbio! Here’s what’s happened: The report of our February meeting at HHMI was published in Science, and Ron Vale and Tony Hyman recently published an article about priority of discovery & preprints in eLife. ASAPbio was awarded grants totalling $400,000 in provisional funding from the…

Read more

Appendix 2: Current feedback on Central Service features

Central Service model documents Summary: Background and a draft model Appendix 1: Rationale for a Central Service Appendix 2: Current feedback on Central Service features Current discussions with the community on proposed features of the Central Service Surveys and information from scientists We will continue to engage the scientific community on what services they want to see…

Read more
CC-BY-SA Thomas Ulrich, Flickr

Moore Foundation requests grantee feedback on preprint policy

The Data-Driven Discovery group at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation released a post on Medium today soliciting feedback on proposed changes to their policies on a variety of open access practices. Preprints are discussed as follows: Ideally, all journal articles would first be available as preprints. Preprints are versions of your manuscript that are not…

Read more

Document 4: What does IT infrastructure for a next generation preprint service look like?

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…

Read more

Document 6: Additional Questions for Possible Consideration

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…

Read more

Document 2: A preprint service supported by an international consortium of funders

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…

Read more

ASAPbio newsletter vol 2 – Your help requested for the ASAPbio Funders’ Workshop

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…

Read more

An update from ASAPbio

We are writing to inform you about some developments since the first ASAPbio meeting at the HHMI in February. This meeting, which was attended by a diverse group of individuals representing many institutions and followed by a sizable online audience, had an intended goal of learning whether there is increased interest and greater support for…

Read more

Some thoughts on ASAPbio

Angela DePace, Assistant Professor, Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School I believe strongly in open access (mainly because everyone deserves access to the scientific literature, but also because of the immorality of making large profits from free academic labor and the unsustainability of library subscription prices).  I also believe in open peer review; I strive to…

Read more

Marty Chalfie sends letter to the worm community

Marty Chalfie recently sent the following message to readers of The Worm Breeder’s Gazette: February 19, 2016 Dear Fellow Worm Workers, I have just returned from a very exciting meeting on archiving of manuscripts (preprints) in the biological sciences organized by Daniel Colón Ramos, Jessica Polka, Ron Vale, and Harold Varmus (See asapbio.org for more information),…

Read more

Submission selfies

Take a picture of yourself and/or your coauthors celebrating the submission of a preprint and post it in the comments below (click the icon to at the bottom left of the text field to upload an image). Don’t forget to include a link to the preprint if it’s already available! You can get a link…

Read more

Open pre-print peer review: a call for greater transparency in the evaluation of manuscripts

Lachlan Coin, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Darya Vanichkina, Centenary Institute, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Alicia Oshlack, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, Australia Transparency and openness are extremely beneficial for science.  The immediate and open publication of findings via preprint servers results in rapid dissemination of…

Read more

Open Scholar: Using Existing Infrastructure to Transform Peer Review

Gary McDowell, Future of Research and Tufts University, and Pandelis Perakakis, Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre, University of Granada, Spain Please address any correspondence to garymcdow@gmail.com and peraka@ugr.es In reforming the culture of peer review and moving towards a system that embraces the use and recognition of pre-print servers, we are cognizant of the…

Read more

bioRxiv: a progress report

John R. Inglis and Richard Sever, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Please address any correspondence to inglis@cshl.edu and sever@cshl.edu bioRxiv (biorxiv.org) is a not-for-profit, online archiving and distribution service for preprints[1] of research papers in the life sciences. It was launched in November 2013 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution, and receives financial support from…

Read more

What Defines “Priority of Discovery” in the Life Sciences?

Ronald D. Vale1 and Anthony A. Hyman2 1Dept. of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California San Francisco and The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, San Francisco, USA 2Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany Address correspondence to: vale@ucsf.edu and hyman@mpi-cbg.de Summary A scientist’s job is to make a discovery and then…

Read more

Pre-prints: building a practical guide and Q&As for junior scientists

Samuel L. Díaz-Muñoz Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and Department of Biology, New York University Pre-prints of research articles have been proposed as a way to advance scientific progress, establish priority of discovery, and ameliorate some of the current shortcomings of the peer review process. All these traits are intended to accelerate the pace…

Read more

Sharing Preprints and Publishing Papers: a Symbiosis

Bernd Pulverer EMBO Press, Meyerhofstrasse 1, Heidelberg, Germany bernd.pulverer@embo.org Print servers allow the efficient sharing and discussion of scientific findings without restriction or delay. Quality assurance through peer review and editorial processes are more important than ever, given the rapid growth and increased complexity of scientific information. I will argue that both processes can work…

Read more

Coupling Pre-Prints and Post-Publication Peer Review for Fast, Cheap, Fair, and Effective Science Publishing

Michael Eisen1,2 and Leslie B. Vosshall 3,4 1 Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and 2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA. 3 Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior and 4 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY. mbeisen@berkeley.edu; leslie@rockefeller.edu Research papers are the primary tangible and lasting output of…

Read more

The role of preprints in publishing

Vitek Tracz and Rebecca Lawrence F1000, Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland St, London, W1T 4LB, vitek@sciencenow.com, rebecca.lawrence@f1000.com We support the adoption of preprints in biomedicine, as one of a number of innovations that will help to accelerate scientific progress. However, we believe that simply adopting preprints on their own, whilst retaining the existing traditional journal publishing…

Read more