Post by Iratxe Puebla, Associate Director, ASAPbio
Although it is hard to believe, we are already in the last month of 2020, and with it we have just closed the first cohort of the ASAPbio Fellows program.
While we had had an ASAPbio Community for several years, we felt that if we wanted to encourage our community members to drive initiatives about preprints, we should provide them with tools, information and support to empower them to do just that, and so we got working to develop a Fellows program. The program launched last spring with the goals to support those in the ASAPbio Community who wanted to gain a deeper understanding about preprints and to provide them with tools to participate in community outreach and become a resource for their communities around preprints.
We enrolled 26 participants from Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. Over the last six months, the program has covered monthly sessions where we explored different aspects of the preprint space and shared experiences and ideas, as well as informal chats to get to know each other and check how the program was going for each participant. In addition, the Fellows organized themselves in smaller groups to work on specific projects, each Fellows group conceptualized their project, agreed on goals and brought items to completion.
Together, the ASAPbio Fellows have supported each other in accomplishing an incredible amount in just six months. Here is a summary of their achievements (you can also see details of the different projects here):
- Online webinar event
- ASAPbio Community Call
- Five blog posts, including the ongoing Clinician’s Corner series
- A Twine game so that you can explore what the potential future scenarios of preprinting will look like
- A survey of journal clubs
- A Handbook guide to organize online events about preprints
- A translation to Spanish for the ASAPbio FAQ: https://asapbio.org/preguntas-frecuentes-sobre-preprints
- Several infographics about preprints, with associated translations to Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian (an initial set of three infographics is available via our preprint FAQ, additional materials coming soon)
- Training course about the scientific process, science communication and where preprints fit (the materials are in progress and will be made publicly available)
I am both humbled and immensely grateful for the enthusiasm, energy and humor that all the Fellows have brought to the program. It has been a pleasure to get to know each of them, to bounce ideas and learn from their experience, and to see them skillfully develop and deliver projects and activities. This has been an amazing experience, and I thank them for making our first cohort of the program a resounding success. I very much look forward to keeping in touch with them and watching what they’ll achieve next. In the wise words of our Fellow Marco Fumasoni ‘Let’s keep being positive, proactive and creative, and I’m sure we will come across each other several times!’
If you have questions about the Fellows program, feel free to contact me on iratxe.puebla@asapbio.org, or join our ASAPbio Community to keep up to date with the latest news and to interact with others about preprints.
We will be pursuing the program next year with a new cohort of participants, so watch this space for announcements on the launch of the 2021 cohort.
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