“In this session, we will explore different approaches to public feedback on preprints and a vision for a future in which they change the structure of scientific communication to promote collaboration at earlier stages in the research cycle….”
“ASAPbio is a 501(c)(3) organization working to promote innovation and transparency in life sciences communication.
We are fully supportive of the 2022 OSTP directive to make all federally-funded research immediately accessible upon publication. Based on the public access plan the NIH has proposed in response to this memo, we appreciate the NIH’s desire to ensure equitable access to research for diverse stakeholders, and to ensure that this is provided at reasonable costs that do not exacerbate existing disparities. Furthermore, we support the need to ensure that research outputs are findable and discoverable through robust infrastructure and standards.
Many of these goals can be supported by moving toward a model where preprints are the primary form of sharing; this would also provide a strong foundation for aligning researchers’ incentives with the goals set out in the RFI. Many researchers now experience a disconnect between wanting to share work with the community and existing incentives for keeping data private. In a preprint-centric model, researchers would be recognized for sharing their work early and completely, which would also accelerate scientific discovery. Preprints also support rigor, reproducibility, and integrity by allowing broad engagement in public commenting and peer review. Given these benefits, we offer the following suggestions for using preprints to promote equitable, cost-effective, and discoverable publishing….”
“The US NIH has released a Request for Information (RFI) about its proposed public access policy (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-23-091.html).
This is an important opportunity for researchers and other community members to voice support for open access and open science. Responses, which can be written by anyone, are due April 24.
Join ASAPbio for an RFI information session and response workshop where we will share relevant background information and important talking points and provide a supportive environment for silent writing. You will also be able to ask questions about the RFI, solicit feedback, and get help submitting your response….”
“Are you new to preprints and want to learn more about their use? Have you been wondering what the buzz is about preprint review? Have you been using preprints for a while and now want to engage others? Then our Fellows program is for you!
The use of preprints in the life sciences has grown over recent years, and an important driver has been community support for preprints. At ASAPbio we recognize that outreach by community members is invaluable in driving awareness about preprints, and we want to empower existing and new community members in driving these conversations, particularly with colleagues in regions or disciplines where preprints are still not common.
To support the members of our community who want to deepen their engagement with preprints, we have since 2020 hosted the ASAPbio Fellows program. We are now thrilled to open applications for the fourth cohort of the program.
The ASAPbio Fellows program provides participants with a comprehensive overview of the preprint and preprint review landscape. The program provides opportunities to explore trends, tools and the outlook for preprints in the life sciences while connecting with others interested in preprints and science communication. The program also allows Fellows to help shape and develop ASAPbio strategic initiatives, or to take forward a project of their choice. Our 2023 Fellows program will run from April to November, and is now open for applications until 24 March 2023….”
“During the pandemic, research communication and progress accelerated through the massively increased posting of preprints. There are over 38,000 preprints in the NIH’s iSearch COVID-19 portfolio covering topics from molecular virology to epidemiology and treatment. Although the increased use of preprints is a positive development, most preprints still take the form of traditional research papers posted shortly before submission to a journal. As a result, preprints generally appear 4 or 5 months prior to journal publication. However, preprints can be used to share research findings at any stage of the research cycle, as they offer much greater flexibility than journals in terms of the length and format of articles that can be posted. Preprints also provide a way for researchers to receive credit for their work, get community feedback, and establish collaborations with researchers who have related interests, without having to wait for publication in a journal.
We believe that it is now time to take a further step towards accelerating research, by substantially expanding the range of work that is shared via preprints. We envisage preprints reporting a wide variety of findings, including early-stage results from a small set of experiments, negative or inconclusive findings that might never be included in a journal article and no doubt much more. Crucially, any such work must still be communicated in a way that other researchers can build on the work, for example by including all relevant data and details of methodology….
We encourage researchers to preprint their research results as their work progresses, including work they may or may not to submit for journal publication. We include below examples of the types of outputs for which preprints can enable dissemination and feedback, but note that this is not an exhaustive list, we hope that additional uses will arise according to the needs of specific communities….”
“Preprints provide a great avenue for researchers to get feedback on their work from the community. This type of community feedback is particularly valuable when gathered on early preprints, that is, on manuscripts that are still work-in-progress, prior to their submission for journal publication. The feedback from the community can allow authors to get a sense of what parts of the work are particularly appreciated by their peers, what can be improved in the write up of the research, and give them ideas for further experiments or lines of research.
To highlight the value of sharing early work via preprints and the benefits of community feedback, ASAPbio and PREreview are partnering to host live-streamed preprint journal clubs for early preprints (the event will follow the format of PREreview Live-streamed preprint journal clubs as described here). During the journal club, participants will discuss the preprint with a focus on highlighting the positive aspects of the work and on offering constructive suggestions for next steps for the study. After the collaborative discussion, we will post a summary of the discussion on PREreview’s platform for preprint reviews. The review will therefore receive a digital object identifier (DOI), and participants will have the option to be recognized for their contribution.
We invite authors of early preprints who would like feedback on their work to submit their work for discussion at one of these journal clubs….”
“In preparation for the Recognizing Preprint Peer Review workshop, ASAPbio integrated input from two working groups to prepare a survey for researchers, funders, and journal editors and publishing organization employees. The survey sought to gather views and experience with preprint feedback and review from a broad range of stakeholders, to help inform the conversations at the workshop.
The survey garnered 230 responses, and we share here summaries of the two largest categories of respondents: 161 responses from researchers and 51 responses from journal editors and publishing organization employees. You can view the results on Google Sheets and on Zenodo….
Most respondents had received no feedback on preprints, which, for the purpose of this survey, we defined as any public commentary on preprints. Of those who had received some feedback, only a small fraction indicated that the feedback came in the form of detailed reviews.
With few researchers having received feedback, perhaps it’s unsurprising that a significant number of them expressed concerns with the prospect: the most significant concerns related to hesitancy about the quality or fairness of the feedback and about the commenter’s motivations for providing it.
However, more than half of respondents said they’d be likely or very likely to request feedback on their preprints if journals incorporated preprint reviews into editorial decisions or treated them like reviews transferred from another journal. Other potential incentives, such as funders recognizing preprint peer reviews in various ways, were not far behind….”
“On 2 December 2022, the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Belgrade (Serbia), hosted a lecture concerning open science and preprints. The event was supported by ASAPbio and aimed to raise awareness around preprints and their place within open science among the local Serbian researchers, and to encourage this community to post preprints for their research works….”
“It is clear that institutional and generalist repositories have an important role to play in supporting preprint sharing worldwide.
To address these gaps, a COAR-ASAPbio Working Group on Preprint in Repositories identified ten recommended practices for managing preprints across three areas: linking, discovery, and editorial processes. While we acknowledge that many of these practices are not currently in use by institutional and generalist repositories, we hope that these recommendations will encourage repositories around the world that collect preprints to begin to apply them locally….”
COAR and ASAPbio Announce Publication of “Ten Recommended Practices for Managing Preprints in Generalist and Institutional Repositories”
Sciety is pleased to announce the first non-English group to bring open review and curation to the platform: ASAPbio–SciELO Preprints crowd review. Based in Brazil, the group reviews preprints relating to infectious disease research that are posted on the SciELO Preprints server in Brazilian Portuguese.
“Preprints are freely accessible, but there are persistent disparities in the visibility and attention paid to preprints according to the authors’ institutions, geographical area, language and other backgrounds. In this interactive session, we will discuss how to promote equity in making preprints visible.”
“In order to foster broad and inclusive participation in this conversation on preprints, we need a positive culture around preprint feedback, but what does this look like in practice? This is the question that the ASAPbio preprint review cultural norms Working Group is tackling. The group is discussing what behaviors reflect the preprint feedback culture we would like to see, with the goal of developing a set of norms for all participants in preprint feedback.
The Working Group is pleased to share an initial draft of principles for creating, responding to, and interpreting preprint feedback, clustered around four broad themes: Focused, Appropriate, Specific, Transparent – FAST. The table below provides elaboration for each of the FAST themes, and we invite feedback from the community on these principles….”
“Through our crowd preprint review activities we seek to draw on the collective input of a group of commenters who each can comment on the preprint according to their level of expertise and interest. We are midway through our activities for 2022 and we wanted to share an update on our progress.
What have we accomplished so far?
We had a great response from the community with over 120 crowd reviewers signed up so far, with strong representation of early career researchers. We have three groups which complete reviews of preprints in each of the disciplines below:
Cell biology – a crowd of 70 members reviews preprints posted on bioRxiv
Biochemistry – a crowd of 35 researchers reviews preprints from bioRxiv
Infectious diseases preprints in Portuguese – a crowd of 30 researchers provide reviews in Portuguese for preprints posted in SciELO Preprints
For each of the groups, a group of ASAPbio Fellows and partners from SciELO Preprints are involved in selecting preprints to review and summarizing the comments received. They also provide regular feedback on aspects of the process that can be adjusted or improved.
We circulate a new preprint to each group every week and invite comments via a Google document. We have seen a great level of engagement from reviewers, and are particularly pleased to see the interactions among reviewers in the collaborative documents, where they provide comments and feedback to each other, not only about the preprints but also about queries that may arise during their review….”
“Improving scientific publishing is often framed as an issue of openness and speed and less often as one of context. In this post, Ludo Waltman and Jessica Polka make the case for a more contextualised approach to open access publishing and preprinting, and introduce the Publish Your Reviews initiative. Launched today by ASAPbio, the initiative allows reviewers to provide richer contextual information to preprints by publishing peer reviews and linking them to the preprint versions of the articles under review….”