“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….”
“#PublishYourReviews is a campaign to encourage more transparency, enrich the scientific conversation with diverse expertise, and catalyze a culture of open commenting on preprints. ScienceOpen is proud to be a supporter of this initiative spearheaded by ASAPbio, a scientist-driven nonprofit working to promote innovation and transparency in the life sciences.
Publish Your Reviews encourages all reviewers to post their comments alongside the preprint versions of articles.
With over 2 million indexed preprints from a wide range of repositories and a powerful infrastructure for open peer review, ScienceOpen is ideally situated to support the Publish Your Reviews initiative. We look forward to facilitating the conversation on preprints and open peer reviewing and publishing your reviews!
The initiative invites all the researchers interested in promoting more open dialog around preprints to sign the following pledge:
“When a journal invites me to review an article that is available as a preprint, I will publish my review alongside the preprint. I will make sure that the published version of my review does not include the journal name, a recommendation for publication, or other confidential information.”
SIGN THE PLEDGE….”
“An initiative encouraging peer reviewers to publish their reviews alongside the preprint of an article…”
“Preprint reviews hold the potential to build trust in preprints and drive innovation in peer review. However, the variety of platforms available to contribute comments and reviews on preprints means that it can be difficult for readers to gain a clear picture of the process that led to the reviews linked to a particular preprint.
To address this, ASAPbio organized a working group to develop a set of features that could describe preprint review processes in a way that is simple to implement. We are proud to share Preprint Review Features (PReF) in an OSF Preprint. PReF consists of 8 key-value pairs, describing the key elements of preprint review. The white paper includes detailed definitions for each feature, an implementation guide, and an overview of how the characteristics of active preprint review projects map to PReF. We also developed a set of graphic icons (below) that we encourage the preprint review community to reuse alongside PReF.
While the Peer Review Terminology developed by the STM working group and the Open Peer Review taxonomy provided useful background for our discussions, they were designed with a focus on journal-based peer review, and do not capture all the possible elements that can be part of preprint review. We acknowledge that there are nuances and different views as to what constitutes “peer review,” “feedback,” and “commenting;” rather than create strict definitions, our aim was to parse out important aspects of the process involved in any form of review on preprints, and to do so in a format that could be used by platforms that host, coordinate, or aggregate such activities. Therefore, we are glad to see that PReF is already implemented on ReimagineReview and on review aggregators like Early Evidence Base and Sciety. We hope that our efforts in the development and adoption of PReF will promote better visibility and discoverability of preprint review….”
“Following our trial last year, ASAPbio is running further preprint crowd review activities in 2022. Our goal is to provide an engaging environment for researchers to participate in providing feedback on preprints and support public reviews for preprints.
In 2022, we will be coordinating public reviews for different disciplines. We are pleased to say that we are collaborating with SciELO Preprints to also coordinate the review of preprints in Portuguese. This year we will cover the following disciplines:
– Cell biology preprints from bioRxiv (English)
– Biochemistry preprints from bioRxiv (English)
– Infectious diseases preprints from SciELO Preprints (Portuguese)
**This form is for reviewers who will participate in the review of preprints from bioRXiv, to sign up for the review of SciELO Preprints in Portuguese, please complete this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0wrAa7FLrw8I1j5p9mysWrstehPqDqsn9UPjUbqrwRnQU-A/viewform
We invite researchers in the disciplines above to join our crowd preprint review activities, and particularly encourage early career researchers to participate. The activities will run for three months, from mid May to August 2022….”
“ASAPbio is seeking several new members for our Board of Directors to support our mission to drive positive change in science communication and to broaden our geographic representation.
We are looking for new Board members who can help us deliver on our strategic goals and complement the perspectives of existing Board members. We particularly seek individuals with expertise in the areas below:
Driving and managing culture change
Meta-research, ideally with a strong understanding of the current landscape and trends around preprints and open peer review
Data and information analysis in the context of science communication
We want to increase the geographical representation within the Board, and we would particularly welcome applications from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania.”
“ASAPbio is seeking a part-time Communications Assistant to help us share our work on preprints & open peer review with the life sciences community. This position provides an opportunity to engage with open science and build communication skills; it might be especially well-suited for students or postdocs.”
“Last year, we convened a Working Group to reflect upon and develop a set of best practices for public preprint feedback. Our rationale was to provide a framework that could benefit and support authors, reviewers, and the community to engage in public and open scientific discussion of preprints, while ensuring a thriving and welcoming environment for everyone. The group worked on a set of “norms” that reflect the behaviors and culture we would like to promote to increase participation and acceptance of preprint public commenting. The result is the FAST principles for preprint feedback, a set of 14 principles clustered around four broad themes:
Focused: assess whether our comments and feedback are targeted towards relevant and actionable parts of the preprint (e.g., the current focus of the paper or the scientific work, rather than suitability for a particular journal).
Appropriate: ensure that before engaging in any kind of scientific discussion, we have reflected on our biases and behave with the same level of integrity as in any other scientific exchange.
Specific: similar to reviewing a manuscript for a journal, preprint feedback should also evaluate the study’s claims against the data and clarify whether the critiques are major or just meant to tackle minor issues that don’t affect the overall findings.
Transparent: as with any type of scientific discussion, it is key to be as open and transparent as possible, embracing any oversights and crediting everyone who participated in the work. However, we acknowledge that not everyone is comfortable signing their comments. In such cases, we provide alternative options for reviewers to disclose their background or expertise to contextualize the comments they post….”
“The ASAPbio Fellows program aims to allow participants to develop awareness around preprint use, and build confidence in interacting with others about preprints and open research. We also hope that the program allows Fellows to connect with other members of the community. More information on the program is available on our website: asapbio.org/fellows.
We welcome applications from active researchers at any career stage, and from those involved in supporting researchers communicate their work e.g. librarians, editors or science communicators. There are no restrictions related to country/location.
The Fellows program will run for 8 months and the expectation is that you will participate in monthly activities requiring up to 5 hours/month. ASAPbio will provide support throughout the program. ASAPbio Fellows are also members of the ASAPbio Community.
We will review applications and follow up with selected participants via email within two weeks after the March 25 application deadline. The program will run from April to November 2022.
Please complete the form below to tell us a bit about you and your interest in the program. Please note: a copy of your answers to this form will be emailed to you. By clicking submit, you consent to ASAPbio sharing the information as detailed in the question descriptions. We will list information of the selected program participants on the ASAPbio website, this includes name, position, institution, research area and social media information. We use your email address to invite you to the Google and Slack groups and to contact you directly. We will not share your email with any third parties without permission….”
“At ASAPbio we believe that we should take a further step towards accelerating research by substantially expanding the range of work that is shared via preprints. We will encourage researchers to preprint ongoing or preliminary work where they would like feedback from other researchers, well in advance of journal submission (asapbio.org/preprints-in-progress).
To help us inform our plans, please complete this brief survey (less than 5 minutes) regarding motivations for and potential concerns around posting preprints that report early or preliminary results. …”
“Preprint reviews hold the potential to build trust in preprints and drive innovation in peer review. However, the variety of platforms available to contribute comments and reviews on preprints means that it can be difficult for readers to gain a clear picture of the process that led to the reviews linked to a particular preprint.
To address this, ASAPbio organized a working group to develop a set of features that could describe preprint review processes in a way that is simple to implement. We are proud to share Preprint Review Features (PReF) in an OSF Preprint. PReF consists of 8 key-value pairs, describing the key elements of preprint review. The white paper includes detailed definitions for each feature, an implementation guide, and an overview of how the characteristics of active preprint review projects map to PReF. We also developed a set of graphic icons (in blogpost feature image) that we encourage the preprint review community to reuse alongside PReF.”