Science is a community effort, but publishing has long been co-opted by commercial interests, where researchers’ labor in authoring, reviewing, and editing are used to bolster publishers’ profits. Preprints are free to post and read, but to what extent do commercial interests influence the space? The theme of Open Access week 2023 was “community over…
The practice of preprinting in the life sciences has grown rapidly. In addition to accelerating scientific publication, preprinting also has the potential to open new avenues of communication among researchers. For example, preprint peer review offers tremendous potential for changing the culture of scientific assessment, broadening participation, and enhancing the robustness of scholarship. While only…
“[T]he Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is partnering with the Center for Open Science and the Wilson Center to source ideas that can chart a course for the next decade of U.S. government action.” See below our response to the call. Motivation: What is an important challenge and/or opportunity in open science you hope to address? Why and why…
Culture change happens within communities. While virtual programs like the ASAPbio Fellows and Community calls link preprint enthusiasts across continents, nothing beats face-to-face interactions. So, as in-person events picked up earlier this year, we created a new program to support discussions about preprints; the ASAPbio Local Hubs program with three community leaders. Here, two of…
Despite technological advances, the time and amount of data required to publish scientific results in journals has increased. The lengthy process of peer review is contributing significantly to that timeline. One of the ways in which this issue can be improved is preprint peer-review, which has been becoming more popular in recent years with new…
These events have now been announced! See details and sign up to attend Network with colleagues in your subfield attending Cell Bio 2023 while celebrating the release of the latest papers at Preprint Launch Parties, a series of events ASAPbio will host in Boston from December 2-6. After a meet & greet over lunch, the…
Preprints have the potential to bring about greater equity in the publishing process and academia more widely. However, the adoption of preprints varies significantly across academic fields and geographical regions. Across Africa, there is limited evidence regarding the number of preprints posted and used. However, the data that does exist points to a low number…
This post originally appeared on Olivier Pourret’s blog and in Indonesian on Dasapta Erwin Irawan’s blog. Authors According to Katharine Sanderson, “publishing-industry representatives warn” that May’s EU Council call for a “no pay” academic publishing model is “unrealistic and lack[ing] detail”. However, the proposal is already being implemented via several approaches: (i) Authors can publish their work…
As the fall conference season approaches, consider maximizing the impact of your talk or poster by posting it as a preprint! While you can also archive your slides or the image of your poster on Zenodo, Figshare, or another repository (a great way to increase your visibility and get a DOI), there are several benefits…
Everyone should have free and immediate access to research results, especially when they are publicly funded. Preprints are one way to share papers immediately and without cost to authors and readers, but much of the peer reviewed literature is still behind paywalls. The 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, also known as the Nelson…
Our fourth Community Call of 2023 featured a discussion about the use of preprints in research assessment. The adoption of any product or innovation requires the presence of appropriate incentives and preprints are no different. Academia is driven by research and researcher assessment; from funding bodies awarding grants, hiring committees assessing potential new faculty members…
Different institutions around the world have varying requirements for PhD students to graduate. Some require a thesis whilst others require published papers (or several!). Publishing a paper can take months or even years, delaying the graduation of students in programmes with this requirement. Delays in graduating can have serious consequences for students. Preprints speed up…
Jonny Coates has been the Associate Director at ASAPbio since 2023. His scientific interests have always been within immune cell biology and microscopy. However, in 2019 he began his journey into the world of preprints and metascience. First becoming a prelighter and member of the ASAPbio community before developing a research program and writing opinion…
Interested in honing your peer review skills while providing valuable feedback to preprint authors? Then join one of our preprint review crowds! Following our two previous cycles of preprint review activities, we are thrilled to announce that ASAPbio will host more crowd preprint review activities in 2023. This year our crowd preprint review activities will…
Major activities 1. Support culture change through community programs and outreach ASAPbio completed the initiatives below to raise awareness of preprints across diverse communities: 2. Promote constructive preprint review ASAPbio promoted adoption of preprint review via activities involving different stakeholders: 3. Expand the usage of preprints to share science earlier ASAPbio undertook projects to encourage…