The following is a message from funding agency representatives who attended our recent Funders’ Workshop.
As research funders who attended the ASAPbio Funder’s Workshop for Preprints held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on May 23-24, 2016, we wish to provide a brief summary of the meeting. This follows the initial Funder’s Perspective drawn from the first ASAPbio Workshop held on February 16-17, 2016, and continues our desire to be transparent while the community continues to explore the value of preprints to the biomedical research enterprise.
At this workshop, the funders were presented with a summary from the first workshop and the results of a survey conducted by ASAPbio. This was followed by an open discussion of the scholarly and technical goals of a preprint service. The agenda then moved to a discussion of two exemplary models of shared governance of a resource in an international setting, Europe PubMedCentral (Europe PMC) and the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB). The final context setting for the funders discussion was provided by representatives of existing and anticipated preprint services, ArXiv, bioRxiv, PeerJ, F1000 Research, and PLOS. What followed was an open session with all stakeholders present and a closed session involving only the funders.
The consensus of the workshop attendees reflected high enthusiasm about further development of a preprint service for the life sciences. At the end of the day, it was agreed by all in attendance that:
- A preprint policy that is as homogeneous as possible across funders is desired, especially in the way that preprints are considered as part of proposal grant submission and review. A subgroup of funders will draft a concept paper addressing some of the policy issues that might arise when implementing such a preprint policy. This draft will be shared with other funders for their input.
- The funders asked ASAPbio to develop a proposal describing the governance, infrastructure and standards desired for a preprint service that represents the views of the broadest number of stakeholders. The proposal should include a budget, goals, milestones and implementation timeline to bring an appropriate community defined preprint service into operation.
- This letter be distributed as widely as possible to inform all stakeholders of the continued interest by funders in expanding the use of preprints by the life sciences community.
Philip Bourne, The National Institutes of Health
Maryrose Franko, Health Research Alliance
Michele Garfinkel, European Molecular Biology Organization
Judith Glaven, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Eric Green, The National Institutes of Health
Josh Greenberg, The Alfred P Sloan Foundation
Jennifer Hansen, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Robert Kiley, The Wellcome Trust
Cecy Marden, The Wellcome Trust
Paul Lasko, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Maria Leptin, European Molecular Biology Organization
Tony Peatfield, Medical Research Council, UK
Brooke Rosenzweig, The Helmsley Trust
Jane Silverthorne, The National Science Foundation
John Spiro, The Simons Foundation
Michael Stebbins, The Arnold Foundation
Nils Stenseth, European Research Council
Carly Strasser, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Neil Thakur, The National Institutes of Health
K. VijayRaghavan, Department of Biotechnology, India
4 Comments