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Ways to promote the productive use of preprints
Preprinting in biology is growing in popularity, but the process is still far from the norm: for the life sciences, preprinting represents only 13% of the literature.
The most obvious way for individual scientists to help turn the tide is, of course, to preprint their own work. But given that it now takes longer to accumulate data for a paper, this opportunity might not come up as often as we’d like.
So, what else can we do?
Click to jump down and see how you can:
Cite preprints
Many biologists (especially those that have never preprinted before, according to our 2020 survey) are concerned that their preprints won’t be properly acknowledged by the community, perhaps leading to their work getting scooped by competitors.
To counter this fear, we need to set an expectation that work disclosed in preprints will be cited fairly when relevant to other preprints and journal articles. A commitment to fairly cite relevant preprints was included in a draft statement from our 2016 meeting, and it was widely endorsed.
For more details on how to cite preprints, see our 2020 blog post.
Nikolai Slavov describes how thoughtful, constructive feedback helped his paper improve.
Discuss preprints on social media
One of the greatest opportunities preprinting presents is the opportunity to discuss work at the earliest possible opportunity and receive early feedback. Authors are not the only ones who benefit from this.
Discussing preprints on social media can lead to useful context for readers, it can help authors incorporate more diverse feedback than would occur through traditional peer review and it can even lead to brand new collaborations.
Set up email alerts
bioRxiv offers both keyword/author and subject category alerts via email. Preprints will also show up in your Google scholar alerts along with published papers. Since PubMed began indexing a limited subset of preprints in June of 2020, they will show up in email alerts as well. EuropePMC, an EMBL-EBI-maintained PubMed Central partner that mirrors its content and also indexes preprints from over 15 servers, allows you to set up RSS feeds for saved searches.
Regardless of how you set it up, you’ll get information about new preprints delivered straight to you.
Review preprints
Reviewing preprints may be even more rewarding that reviewing papers: you have the option to share your opinions with the authors and you provide vital context to readers.
There are multiple ways to share your preprint review; by uploading the review as a comment, uploading to online repositories or using browser plugins. You can incorporate preprint reviewing into journal clubs or even as part of a graduate course. Learn more about the growing number of preprint commentary and open peer review sites on ReimagineReview.
Share some stickers
There are probably researchers in your department who aren’t aware that someone they know has posted a preprint. You can spark conversations around your lab or at conferences by affixing a sticker to your laptop, water bottle, or office door.
Edit your email signature
You can raise awareness about preprints with every message sent. Here’s an example.
Join the ASAPbio community
To drive ASAPbio’s mission to raise awareness of preprints and encourage their productive use in the life sciences, we work closely with the ASAPbio Community, a group of researchers and others involved in research communication who interact and exchange information and feedback around the use of preprints.
The ASAPbio Community members:
- Interact via Slack and community calls
- Receive monthly newsletters
- Contribute to projects to promote the use of preprints
Here’s a template you can modify to get you started! Select “File/make a copy” or download to get started.
Add a slide to your talks
Every time you give a talk (whether at lab meeting, a conference, or in a seminar series), you have an opportunity to start a conversation about preprints.
Of course, this works best if customized to fit your own experience (eg, a screenshot of the preprint you’ve been discussing in the talk) and the audience (whether researchers in biology or another discipline, or a group of other stakeholders).