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 the life sciences as Associate Director at ASAPbio
View this on the web.
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 a meeting to discuss supporting the use of preprints in the life sciences. Since that time, we have advocated for policy changes, stimulated community organization, organized discussions around best practices, and expanded our focus to other areas such as transparency and innovation in peer review.
The position
The Associate Director will 1) manage and grow the community of ASAPbio ambassadors, 2) create resources to enable advocacy for preprints, 3) drive discussions on best practices, and 4) assist with general operations of ASAPbio.
Requirements
PhD in biology or a related field; a passion for open science & preprints; strong communication skills; experience in advocacy, outreach, event organization, and/or community management
Hours, location, and start date
This is a full time position. Executive Director Jessica Polka is located in Cambridge, MA, so the Boston area is preferred. Expected start date is 2018-09-01.
To apply
Please send a CV and cover letter to jessica.polka@asapbio.org with the words “Job application” in the subject line.
Preprints on Europe PMC
Starting today, you can find preprints on Europe PMC! Abstracts of preprints from several different servers, including bioRxiv, are now indexed along with published papers. These abstracts feature a disclaimer that the article is a preprint and a link to the journal version (if available); they also benefit from standard features of Europe PMC (like a graph of citations over time and annotations of organisms, chemicals, and genes).
This represents a major step in the perception of preprints as an integral form of life sciences communication.
In case you missed it…
- AfricArxiv is launching
- The Lancet is launching a preprint server at SSRN
- PreLights, a preprint highlighting service from The Company of Biologists, is seeking new highlighters
- Crossref reports that preprint citations are growing at 10x the rate of journal citations
- eLife is trialing a new approach to peer review, inspired by a proposal from HHMI discussed at our February 2018 Peer Review meeting
Thank you!
Jessica Polka
Director, ASAPbio
