Resources

Bibliographic databases should support innovation and experimentation. Here, we offer four criteria for innovation-friendly bibliographic databases. We urge the global research community to use databases that support and do not hinder innovation in scholarly communication and research assessment.

The purpose of this brief is to provide an introduction to an increasingly popular way of communicating outputs of research: the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) model. This model came into practice in the early 2000s, and it is now beginning to grow more rapidly. Here, we explain the model for the benefit of researchers, research funders, research institutions, and others in the scholarly communication ecosystem, and we provide data on uptake of the model to date.

Low- and middle-income countries face obstacles in sharing scientific research globally due to costly publishing fees and biases. Preprints—manuscripts shared before formal journal-organised peer review—offer a potential remedy. However, their uptake, mainly in the USA, UK, and Western Europe, contrasts sharply with limited adoption in Africa. Understanding African researchers’ views on preprints remains scant, hindering acceptance. Our survey reveals widespread unawareness regarding preprints and reliance on traditional publishers among African researchers. Of 182 respondents from Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania, 41.9% posted preprints, yet 77% were unaware of Africa-specific repositories. While non-posters read preprints, fewer cited or shared them. Social media served as the primary platform for preprint sharing, with concerns over sharing before peer review. Although recognized for accessibility and career enhancement, concerns persisted regarding recognition and co-author unfamiliarity. Encouragement from publishers was vital, but opinions varied on institutional and funder involvement, highlighting differing perceptions in promoting preprints. Additionally, our data suggests that traditional publishers dominate the preprint landscape for Africa-based researchers. This study provides important preliminary information relating to perceptions of preprints across African scholars and highlights the need for urgent further work to increase awareness and adoption of preprints across Africa.

Preprints catalyze rapid and open communication of research. A frequent criticism of preprints, however, is their lack of peer review. In recent years, myriad new initiatives have enabled review of preprinted research to be coordinated, collected, and displayed alongside preprints. This provides evaluation and context for readers, as well as feedback for the authors. The processes behind preprint review are diverse and may differ from journal peer review, which can be a challenge for readers seeking to compare and interpret the reviews. To address this, the ASAPbio organized a working group that set out to define key features of preprint review processes. Here, we describe Preprint Review Features (PReF) as descriptors and provide an implementation guide. PReF captures the key elements of preprint review processes using 8 standard key-value pairs. PReF can serve within the descriptions of individual preprint review processes, and act as search filters on indexing services. Widespread adoption of PReF will promote understanding and categorization of preprint review and improve its discoverability.

There has been strong interest in preprint commenting and review activities in recent years. Public preprint feedback can bring benefits to authors, readers and others in scholarly communication, however, the level of public commenting on preprints is still low. This is likely due to cultural barriers, such as fear by authors that criticisms on their paper will bias readers, editors and evaluators, and concerns by commenters that posting a public critique on a preprint by a more senior colleague may lead to retribution. In order to help address these cultural barriers and foster positive and constructive participation in public preprint feedback, we have developed a set of 14 principles for creating, responding to, and interpreting preprint feedback. The principles are clustered around four broad themes: Focused, Appropriate, Specific, Transparent (FAST). We describe each of the FAST principles and designate which actors (authors, reviewers and the community) each of the principles applies to. We discuss the possible implementation of the FAST principles by different stakeholders in science communication, and explore what opportunities and challenges lie ahead in the path towards a thriving preprint feedback ecosystem.

This review attempts to identify all preprint platforms with biomedical and medical scope and to compare and contrast the key characteristics and policies of these platforms. We provide a searchable database to enable relevant stakeholders to compare between platforms.