ASAPbio newsletter vol 15 – New resources and preprint updates

Dear subscribers, 

We hope your summer (or winter, depending on your hemisphere) is off to a great start. Here are some highlights from us in the office from the months since our last update:

ReimagineReview

Earlier this year, we launched a directory of innovative peer review experiments, both inside and outside of the journal system. Called ReimagineReview, the site enables visitors to search for projects by discipline, content reviewed (preprints, published journal articles, etc) and problems the projects seek to address (eg transparency, quality of review, speed, incentives and recognition for reviewing, costs, bias in review, or reviewer training).

We’re now planning to engage the community of project leads in creating a community of practice and also increasing awareness of their work in the broader community. Stay tuned for a session at the 2019 ASCB|EMBO meeting!

We hope you enjoy exploring the directory. Please let us know of any projects that are missing by contacting the ReimagineReview Coordinator, Victoria Yan (victoria.yan at asapbio.org)!

Transpose

There are currently almost 3,000 records in the database; while many of them were added by editors and publishers, we encourage anyone to contribute. All of the Transpose data are CC0 so that they can be reused in other projects. In the long term, we hope that information about peer review policies might become integrated into more stable infrastructure, like Crossref or SHERPA/RoMEO. We are also continuing to analyze data from our landscape study, and are planning to develop model policies in consultation with the community

Working with a group of collaborators, we launched a Transpose, a directory of journal policies on open peer review, co-reviewing, and preprinting. We found that many highly-cited journals have vague or non-existent policies in these areas. As a result, authors, funders, reviewers, and others can have difficulty finding journals that align with their values. To make this process easier, Transpose enables users to compare up to three different journals side by side:

Recent news about preprints 

NIH CSR reiterates to study section reviewers that preprints may be cited in applications feedback. This communication from the CSR was received in response to feedback about the review process we gathered and submitted earlier this year.

Did you know? We curate a list of new works about the adoption and impact of preprints at https://asapbio.org/reading. For example: in June, Nicholas Fraser et al. preprinted their data and analysis showing that journal articles that had been previously deposited as a preprint (posted to bioRxiv before 2018) gained 1.5x more citations than a control group of articles that were not preprinted (https://doi.org/10.1101/673665). 

Are you giving a talk about preprints, peer review or transparency in science? You can browse and reuse slide decks we’ve presented before from asapbio.org/resources.

Upcoming events

Find us at the following events in the next few months:

• Seattle, WA, 2019-07-11 (Jessica): UW and Hutch Biomedical Research Integrity Program lectures
• Mountain View, CA, 2019-07-12 (Jessica): SciFoo
• Accra, Ghana, 2019-07-24 (Naomi): WACCIP Annual Research Conference
• Las Vegas, NV, 2019-08-31 (Jessica): Biohack the Planet
• Warsaw, Poland, 2019-09-01 (Naomi): INCF Neuroinformatics 2019
• New York, NY, 2019-09-20 (Jessica): Let’s Have an Awesome Time Doing Science (NYU)
• Germany, 2019-09-23 (Naomi): ZMBP Summer Academy

Roundup

Here’s what’s been going on since our last newsletter:

• PLOS/ORCID integration provides credit for peer review (2019-06-26)
• Cell Systems offers authors option to publish peer review (2019-06-26)
• MedRxiv launches with 16 clinical science preprints (2019-06-26)
• JCB enables authors to publish peer review (2019-06-04)
• Wellcome Trust updates OA policy including preprint requirements to be effective from January 2021 (from 2020) (2019-05-31)
• All 7 PLOS journals enable the publication of peer review (2019-05-22)
• Springer Nature unifies preprint policies on licensing, citation, and media coverage (2019-05-15)
• Preprints can now be added to ORCID records (2019-05-03)
• Hilda Bastian rounds up studies of peer review (2019-05-01)
• PLOS has posted 2,500 preprints to bioRxiv through author opt-in upon submission in the first year of the PLOS-bioRxiv preprint-posting partnership (2019-05-01)
• New preprint compares growth and adoption across the nine most active OSF preprint platforms (2019-05-01)
• 500 preprints posted on EarthArXiv since its launch in October 2017 (2019-05-01)
• 55% of reviewers opt in to signing their reviews in Nature Research trial (2019-04-18)
• In Review expands to cover 8 more BMC journals including Bioinformatics, Developmental Biology, Ecology, Genomics, Infectious Diseases, Microbiology and Neuroscience (2019-04-07)
• AMRC Open Research officially launches as an open peer review platform for research funded by AMRC member charities (2019-02-27)
• Beilstein Journals to launch preprint server for organic chemistry and nanotechnology in Spring 2019 (2019-02-19)
• HHMI leaders publish a proposal for the future of scientific publishing (2019-02-14)

Until next time,

Jessica Polka & Naomi Penfold

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