Surveying the landscape of products and services for sharing preprints
We share a listing of 15 different products or services in use or in development for sharing preprints online.
Updates and announcements from ASAPbio
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…
Sharing new educational resources on open licensing for preprints
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…
Introducing the ASAPbio Member Advisory Group
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…
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…
Responding to concerns about preprints in the media
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…
ASAPbio newsletter vol 13 – ASAPbio is hiring, Preprints on Europe PMC, ICYMI
Dear subscribers, Hope July is treating you well! Here are some recent updates from ASAPbio and the world of preprints and open peer review. We’re hiring (please help us spread the word!) Preprints now appear at Europe PMC A digest of recent preprint and peer review news Job posting: advance the use of preprints in…
Job posting: advance the use of preprints in the life sciences as Associate Director at ASAPbio
2018-09-25 update: This posting is now 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! About ASAPbio We’re a young 501(c)(3) nonprofit that got its start in start in 2015 as an informal group of researchers who organized…
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…
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…
New directions for ASAPbio: outcomes of the July 19 workshop
On July 19, preprint service providers, funders, and researchers gathered in Cambridge, MA and via videoconference for a live-streamed ASAPbio workshop about the evolving preprint ecosystem (see video recording and collaborative notes). The goal of the meeting was to assess outstanding needs in light of recent developments, including CZI’s partnership with bioRxiv. At the meeting,…
ASAPbio newsletter vol 10 – Meeting on 7/19, licensing task force
Dear subscribers, The preprint ecosystem is growing rapidly. The CZI/bioRxiv partnership will fuel the expansion of the leading preprint server in the life sciences, and many other servers and platforms with varying degrees of disciplinary overlap exist or are planned (arXiv, PeerJ Preprints, preprints.org, OSF Preprints, ChemRxiv, SSRN, SciELO, PsyArxiv, EngArXiv, SocArXiv, Authorea, F1000Research, etc).…
ASAPbio launches preprint licensing task force
Every month, more and more life scientists are choosing to post a preprint. This decision can give scientists visibility in their field, establish priority of their work in progress, gain recognition by funding agencies, and elicit feedback to improve their manuscript. But once the decision to preprint is made, authors posting to some servers are…
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…
Requesting your feedback: how should life scientists set standards for preprints?
May 10, 2017 update: ASAPbio has announced a four-month suspension of the RFA process to reassess the preprint ecosystem and community needs. Preprints (scientific manuscripts that have been posted prior to completion of peer review) allow for the direct exchange of knowledge between scientists. They constitute a global public good that promotes scientific progress. However,…
ASAPbio newsletter vol 9 – NIH encourages the use of preprints, Central Service update, ASAPbio on Twitter
Dear subscribers, It’s been a big month for preprints! NIH encourages preprints On March 24, the world’s largest biomedical research agency released a landmark policy on preprints and other interim research products. The notice states that “The NIH encourages investigators to use interim research products, such as preprints, to speed the dissemination and enhance the…
ASAPbio newsletter vol 8 – Scientific Society engagement, a new grant, ASAPbio retrospective
Dear subscribers, Last month, we held a Town Hall meeting for Scientific Societies at NAS in Washington, DC. The meeting featured presentations by representatives of ASAPbio, NIH, and scientific societies who are innovating with preprints and publishing. More information and a video recording of the meeting is available online. At the meeting, Neil Thakur of…
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…
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…
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…