FY 2024 Report

Major activities

1. Support culture change through community programs and outreach

ASAPbio completed the initiatives below to raise awareness of preprints across diverse communities (see overview):

• Completed a fifth cohort of the Fellows program, implementing a new two-track approach to communications and project involvement
• Increased visibility and engagement of ASAPbio in different geographical areas by expanding the “local hubs” program pilot (described here)
• Grew representation in the ASAPbio Community of researchers based in India, Africa, and Latin America via outreach as part of our programs (Fellows program, Community Action Group) and participation in events (e.g., African Reproducibility Network training) for an audience in these geographical regions. We supported community-run events hosted in India, Tanzania, and Nigeria.

2. Promote constructive preprint review

ASAPbio promoted adoption of preprint review via activities involving different stakeholders:

• Hosted in-person activities at The Protein Society annual meeting to promote preprint commenting
• Engaged first-time reviewers in preprint review, and partnered with the Life Science Alliance journal, as part of our the crowd review initiative
• Ran a program to convert in-person journal clubs to preprint review clubs

3. Expand the usage of interim research products to share science earlier

ASAPbio promoted the use of preprints for sharing early research work though these activities:

• Campaign to encourage the online sharing of posters
• Drove awareness of varied uses for preprints (including as part of a publish-review-curate model of publishing papers, data, and other research outputs)

In addition to these activities, we engaged in advocacy to support the US federal public access & open science policy, the “no pay” model, and community engagement with cOAlition S.

How funding was spent

In 2024, ASAPbio received $250k in contributions ($100,000 from CZI, $100,000 from HHMI, and $50,000 from the Simons Foundation) as well as contracts/earned income and honoraria ($21,082.50 from HHMI, $1,000 from the Federation of American Scientists, $4,170 from the Center for Open Science, and $20,000 from the Pew Research Center). The shortfall in the 2024 budget is covered by reserves.