On September 22, ASAPbio will be hosting an online live preprint review event as part of Peer Review Week 2020. We will get together to write constructive comments and reviews on preprints, with the aim to develop the largest collection to date of public commentary on preprinted research in a single day. We are delighted to have PREreview, preLights, Peer Community In, Review Commons and PubPeer as part of the event to interact with participants.

The event will include:

• Maurine Neiman, editor at Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B and Thomas Lemberger from EMBO, will provide editorial tips on how to write constructive reviews
• Review preprints! – Work on preprint reviews and comments
• Opportunities for networking
• Group discussion to review tally of reviews and share feedback

Interested? Read more about the event here, and join us in this collaborative effort to build trust in research.

Register now

Review Commons webinar

Tuesday, September 8, 2020 

12pm New York | 9am San Francisco | 5pm London | 6pm Berlin | 9:30pm Mumbai

Review Commons, a collaborative project between EMBO and ASAPbio, is a free, journal-independent peer review service that allows you to transfer your manuscript and its reviews to one of 17 participating journals for consideration, and also to post your refereed preprint to bioRxiv. Join this event to learn more about the service from its creators and users.

Schedule

• Why Review Commons: Ron Vale (HHMI)/Maria Leptin (EMBO)
• The mechanics of Review Commons: Thomas Lemberger/Sara Monaco (EMBO)
• Evaluating Review Commons: Thomas Lemberger/Sara Monaco (EMBO)
• Panel: Author, Reviewer, and Affiliate Editor perspectives: Gira Bhabha (NYU), Rita Tewari (U of Nottingham), & Maureen Murphy (Wistar Institute)
• Open discussion

Register now

Citing preprints

Should and can preprints be cited? We sometimes get queries about preprint citation so we have offered a deeper dive in a dedicated blog post.

Preprints are legitimate research outputs and deserve fair attribution in the context of citation practice. We discuss the importance of giving credit via citation when a preprint is used or built upon by others for their own research, different aspects of journal policies around preprint citation, the format to use, and the need for further transparency in editorial policies for preprint citation.

Announcing Doc Maps: a framework for describing editorial events

We’re happy to announce a collaboration with TU Graz and the Knowledge Futures group on Doc Maps, a project to create machine-readable ways to describe peer review & editorial processes on articles.

As preprints undergo screening checks and pick up peer review from an increasing number of third party sources, it’s becoming more challenging to know to what extent they have been scrutinized (and what that process looks like). The same has always been true of most journal articles, which often clearly do not display their peer review status, much less details of the process.

To learn more, see the press release here. 

Meet the ASAPbio Fellows

The ASAPbio Fellows have been selected to participate in a six-month program that provides them with tools and skills to drive discussions about the productive use of preprints in the life sciences, and to become ASAPbio representatives for their communities. Each month, we feature a few of them so you can get to know them better. Read more about the program here.

Suraj Kannan

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research.

I’m currently an MD/PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. My research interests are in cardiac tissue engineering and regenerative medicine – I’m particularly interested in the use pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac tissues for clinical application. My PhD work is focused on improving the maturation status of these engineered cardiac tissues for better clinical utility. A lot of my research revolves around using single-cell RNA-sequencing, and so I get a nice mix of in vivo and in vitro wet lab biology as well as computational biology. I hope to wrap up my PhD in the next year or so, and then get back to my clinical rotations!

What are you excited about in science communication?

I’ve been particularly thrilled by the emergence of multiple platforms for publicizing and critiquing studies. There’s no reason that peer review should be closed-off and hidden, and these platforms demonstrate the ideal of peer review as a living, breathing, shared process within the scientific community. From my personal perspective, I’ve also learned so much just by trawling preLights or the comments from various preprint journal clubs – hearing other people’s thoughts on a paper is a great way to be exposed to new ideas.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPio Fellows program?Perhaps I am a bit on the extreme end, but I think that the current journal-driven peer review system has led to a strange ecosystem that favours the pursuit of “flashy” or “exciting” science at the cost of high quality research. I firmly believe that the combination of preprints (to enable rapid dissemination) and open peer review will lead to a better focus on quality science and improve incentives within the scientific community. Of course, it is one thing for me to complain about these issues on Twitter and quite another to take concrete steps towards implementing new publication structures. I have long admired ASAPbio’s progress on these fronts, and joined the Fellows program so I could get more involved in initiatives to promote preprints and open peer review.

Ask me about…?

1. My favourite organ? The heart. (There are other organs?)
2. Favourite single cell RNA-seq pipeline? Whooooo boy, I could go on for hours. Of course, the real answer is always “it depends on your project.”
3. Favourite music? At heart, I’m a blues and jazz guy, but I’ve definitely been getting in neosoul and Instagram rock (for want of a better term) recently – check out Mateus Asato, Kazuki Isogai, Melanie Faye, or Polyphia, Covet, and Ichika Nito if you want something a bit more band-like! (And also send me your music recs too).

Kirsty Ferguson

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh, working on the molecular drivers of cancer stem cells in an aggressive adult brain cancer called glioblastoma. Using normal neural stem cells and patient-derived cancer stem cells, I am investigating the role of a key neurodevelopmental transcription factor on self-renewal.

What are you excited about in science communication?

I think the uptake of preprints in recent months will be a catalyst for changing how science is communicated. It is exciting to see how the publication system is becoming more open and inclusive, and how new platforms are enabling early career researchers to contribute to a change in the status quo.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program?

I chose to participate in the ASAPBio Fellows program to increase my knowledge around preprints and open science communication. It is important for researchers to understand, and help to improve, the scientific publishing process – this program is increasing my own awareness and will enable me to have productive discussions with others around open science. It is also great to meet and learn from researchers from around the world.

Ask me about…

Brains, photography, mental health and baking!

Humberto Debat

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research

I am a research scientist at the Institute of Plant Pathology at the Center for Agricultural Research of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology of Argentina, INTA. I obtained my training at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina and at the University of Ajou in South Korea. At our lab, we study the interface of viruses and crops from a holobiome perspective. I am interested in the development of novel approaches to reduce losses associated with plant diseases and passionate about understanding an expanding global virosphere.What are you excited about in science communication?

I am interested in open science practices and consider open access to scientific knowledge a Human right. I am an advocate on the use of preprints in the life sciences. I am interested in multilingual scholar communications and I have co-developed a tool dubbed PanLingua to search and provide access to automatically translated full versions of all bioRxiv preprints. I am excited about, collaborative and community driven scholarly communications, non-commercially rooted and academy lead models where scientific literature is free to read and free to publish. I am interested in the asymmetries of scholar communications from a geopolitical perspective. More recently I have been involved in assessing how to improve scientific meetings and make conferences more equitable, effective and environmentally sustainable.
 
Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program?

I chose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program to learn about initiatives to promote open and reproducible science and to discuss with a broad and diverse community how to improve scholarly communications. In turn, I believe this program will provide me tools to try to encourage and boost good practices in science at a regional level.   

Ask me about…

Why I think scholarly communications should be a right and not a market, and why scientific conferences should shift immediately to virtual. Also, ask me about dogs, wine from Mendoza and asados.

News roundup

Europe PMC: unlocking the potential of COVID-19 preprints – Europe PMC is now indexing the full text for preprints related to the COVID-19 pandemic and SARS-CoV-2 virus.

‘How the COVID-19 crisis has prompted a revolution in scientific publishing‘ -Dario Taraborelli(Chan Zuckerberg Initiative)discusses the role that preprints have played in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the opportunities they bring for open community review and greater collaboration in research.

‘Is the rush to understand COVID-19 making us more confused about COVID-19?‘ – the piece in Deseret News discusses the flow of COVID-19 research shared via preprints, the risk of misinformation and mitigation approaches, and the need to acknowledge scientific discovery as an iterative process.

Get Involved in Peer Review Week 2020 – ASAPbio will be participating in Peer Review Week, which is taking place 21-25 September 2020. The theme this year is Trust in Peer Review and there are many ways to get involved, visit the Peer Review Week website for details.

Events

ASAPbio will participate in

Jessica will chair the panel discussion ‘Remodeling peer review in light of preprints’ on September 30 as part of the PEERE virtual conference.

Iratxe will participate in the SSP New Directions in Scholarly Publishing virtual seminar, October 1, session ‘Preprints: Testing Science’s Need for Speed Limits’.

Perceived benefits and concerns about preprints – initial survey results 

We had 546 responses to our survey about the perceived benefits and concerns around preprint – our thanks to everyone who shared their views. We will be taking a deeper dive into the data over the coming weeks but here are some initial takes from the responses:

• Main perceived benefits: increased speed of research communication, preprints are free to read, additional exposure for research, opportunity for feedback.
• Main perceived concerns: premature media coverage of preprints, publicly sharing information before peer review, uncertainty about copyright and licensing, information overload.
• Preprint authors are less likely to have concerns than those who have not posted a preprint, and score the perceived benefits more highly.

Want to find out more? Read our blog post for a summary of our initial observations and to access a dashboard for the data.

Join our August Community Call to discuss preprints in the media

Our next community call will take place on August 27 (noon Eastern, 5pm BST) with the theme ‘Preprints in the media’.

As the results from the survey show, media coverage is one of the main concerns around preprints; during the call, we will discuss preprints and the media with James Fraser, Professor at University of California San Francisco, and with the science journalist Roxanne Khamsi. We will also request feedback on the issues and on approaches that can help mitigate and address potential concerns, we look forward to hearing your views!

The last section of the call will cover updates from Community members, if you have a preprint project you’d like to share, please add it to the agenda.

Register for the Community Call

The #biopreprints2020 report is open for feedback
 

We are delighted that the report summarising the work and recommendations from the #biopreprints2020 workshop is now available as a preprint: ‘Building trust in preprints: recommendations for serves and other stakeholders‘.

The report outlines the recommendations for preprint metadata, definitions for withdrawal and removal of preprints, data availability statements, versioning and review events in the context of preprints. We thank the workshop participants and the representatives of additional preprint services for their contributions to this resource.

We’ll look to incorporate feedback into a future revision of the report and thus we very much welcome comments and suggestions.

Comparing journal-independent review services 

There are a number of platforms, journals and services that offer feedback, commentary, and peer review of preprints. This type of journal-independent review is focused on a constructive evaluation of the research rather than an assessment of journal match, it provides readers with additional context about the paper and can speed up editorial decisions if the work is later on submitted to a journal.

Learn more about the different modalities, and how they compare and differ at our blog post about the four services provided by eLife‘s Preprint Review, Peerage of Science, Peer Community In and Review Commons of EMBO and ASAPbio.

Meet the ASAPbio Fellows

Yamini Yogalakshmi

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research.
An early stage researcher working on interdisciplinary projects, at the interface of cell biology and biophysics. My academic training includes a Masters of Technology specializing in Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering, from NIT-Rourkela, India and a Bachelor of Technology in Biotechnology from SRM University-Chennai, India. Currently, I am a 4th year PhD scholar working between the labs of Sandrine Etienne-Manneville at Institut Pasteur and Bruno Goud at Institut Curie. My PhD project is titled “Isoforms of Cdc42: function, localization and regulation” and is funded by the Marie-Curie Horizon 2020 network Polarnet-ITN. Cdc42 is a small GTPase protein regulating cell polarization events. Interestingly, Cdc42’s C-terminal which is differs for both the isoforms comprises of a CAAX box which allows it to anchor to membranes. My key objective is to understand the functions of these isoforms dependent on their subcellular localization dependent on their CAAX box sequences.

What are you excited about in science communication?

Science communication, the ability to share, educate and promote scientific studies is exciting in itself. However, what keeps me ticking in this field is the ability to raise awareness of science-related topics. One such polarizing topic is scientific publishing. I am always eager to understand what goes behind the arcane publishing process and what are the ongoing efforts to better this process and eventually be a part of the dissemination of information related to speeding up scientific publication.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program?

Open Science and instrumental tools such as preprints, I believe are the way forward within the biological scientific community. Mainly with the motive to accelerate the conventional publishing process in place. Therefore, I wanted to join the ASAPbio Fellows program to be able to learn more about preprints and initiatives behind open dissemination of scientific work. I also thought it would be a great opportunity to meet like-minded people and be part of a group working towards enabling faster scientific communication. I have previously been part of the ASAPbio Ambassadors community and have always learnt a lot from the projects carried out by the network in the past.

Ask me about…

Open science, preprints, Cell polarity, or even life in Paris.

Sarah Stryeck

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research

I did my PhD in integrative structural biology and metabolism research. During that time, I performed a large number of NMR-based metabolomics experiments for different collaboration partners which was challenging to manage. Currently, I am employed as a postdoctoral researcher in data stewardship where I am deploying a cyberinfrastructure to ensure transparent, reproducible, biological research. In addition, I am also involved in biological research projects in the life sciences (e.g. caloric restriction mimetics) where I am mainly contributing with bioinformatics data analysis.

What are you excited about in science communication?

In my current position, I am working a lot with researchers to help them with research data management and data analytics tools. In this job, it is essential to transfer the knowledge about research concepts and data to technical staff in order to develop community-driven tools that offer exactly what researchers need. This science communication ensures that technical infrastructures are not only implemented, but co-creation and open participation of researchers in the implementation process foster the cultural change that is needed.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program?

I chose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program to get involved in a community interested in improving transparency and communication of life science research. As a data steward, I am mainly focusing on research data management and reproducible research, however, I am keen to learn more about the preprint landscape and innovative ways to publish. This will help me spread the world amongst the research community I am working with.

Ask me about…

Big Data.

Fabio Palmieri

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research.

I’m currently finishing my PhD in microbiology in the group of Pilar Junier at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Regarding my line of research, I’m interested in Bacterial-Fungal Interactions in the soil ecosystem and in human health, and for the latter more specifically in host-microbe/host-pathogen interactions. I’m currently working on developing a bacterial control alternative to fight against pulmonary aspergillosis, instead of using antifungal drugs.

What are you excited about in science communication?

I’m really excited about sharing and communicating science in all its forms: lay communication, posters, presentations, articles, but also in promoting a broader adoption of preprints in the life sciences as a means to share results quickly to the community.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program?

I chose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program because I’m interested in learning more about preprints in order to be a contact point for questions related to preprinting at my institution. I also want to create and run a preprint journal club in my doctoral program as a means of training on how to review a paper, which is an important skill to acquire as an early career scientist.

Ask me about…

I like reading books, watching series, cooking and hiking.

News roundup

‘Covid-19 Shows That Scientific Journals Need to Open Up’ – Justin Fox discusses the history of publishing and recent moves towards more openness in research communication, including preprints.

‘How to identify flawed research before it becomes dangerous‘ – Mike Eisen and Robert Tibshirani discuss challenges around the dissemination of early research to the public and suggest creating a rapid-review service for preprints of broad public interest.

Share your views about preprints – take the surveyASAPbio and the attendees of the #biopreprints2020 workshop are looking to get community feedback on the perceived benefits and concerns around preprints. We are seeking perspectives from a wide range of stakeholders involved in research communication to better understand how preprinting is perceived across stakeholder groups and research disciplines. Complete this brief surveyto share your views (less than 5 minutes to complete).

Responses will be shared publicly, aggregated across geographic, disciplinary, or professional categories. We will be using the results to inform future steps toward community engagement around preprints and to guide the development of preprint-related resources for different stakeholders.

Take the survey

Guest blog post: Trends in Open Peer Review

There has been rapid growth in the adoption of open peer review modalities among journals over the last decade and this trend has accelerated since 2017. This is one of the findings from a recent study by Peiling Wang (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Dietmar Wolfram (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and their colleagues. In their blog post, Professors Wang and Wolfram present salient findings from their study, discuss their broader research into how authors and reviewers engage with transparent review models and present lines of future research to gain a better understanding into open peer review.

Readings on racial inequities in academia and publishing

During #ShutDownSTEM, we reflected on how we can work to support a more equitable world as we pursue our mission, for example, by upholding the commitment to encourage diversity stated in our community guidelines, seeking diverse representation, evaluating open science interventions in light of their potential effects on equity and inclusion, and promoting the development of interventions that address inequality. We also worked to educate ourselves about the state of race and ethnicity in science and publishing. Read more to see resources we found helpful.

June Community call roundup

Our first ASAPbio Community call took place on 18 June 2020, we discussed the #biopreprints2020 workshop and the areas of preprint practice that different working groups have been focusing on. The working groups have developed recommendations for: engaging stakeholders, metadata requirements, data availability, version management, surfacing review events and handling of withdrawal and removal of preprints.

At the call attendees discussed the recommendations and provided feedback on the feasibility of different approaches and additional areas of consideration.

We will be finalising a report summarising the workshop and the recommendations in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

Meet the ASAPbio Fellows

The ASAPbio Fellows have been selected to participate in a six-month program structured to provide participants with the tools and skills they need to drive discussions about the productive use of preprints in the life sciences, and to become ASAPbio representatives at their institutions or scientific conferences. Each month, we’ll feature a few of the 26 Fellows so you can get to know them better. Read more about the program here.

Thabiso Motaung

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research. I obtained a PhD in Biotechnology from Free State University in 2015 and subsequently completed postdoctoral studies with the Agricultural Research Council and South African Sugarcane Research Institute, respectively. I joined the academic staff at the University of Pretoria (Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology) in September 2019, as a lecturer and a supervisor for postgraduate research projects.I am part of a diverse research team based in the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, located on the University of Pretoria campus. My primary research interest lies in understanding the molecular basis of microbial pathogen interaction with plants. I am leveraging a molecular genetic approach in addressing this research area, particularly focusing on how small RNA molecules and extracellular membrane vesicles influence the virulence of forest pathogens.

What are you excited about in science communication? Evolving technology (and partly the COVID-19 pandemic) have radically reshaped the way we think about communicating science, making it relatively simple for crucial scientific data to be shared globally and made public. These are certainly exciting times for me to be a scientist as they demand capacity to discriminate between science information and misinformation, the varying and weird interpretations of it, and matching or contrasting these with reality or wider relevance to society.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program? I chose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program to further improve my knowledge about the preprint landscape, to stay well-informed with latest developments around preprints and, ultimately, to raise awareness around the productive use and potential benefits of preprints in my country.

Ask me about…Professional responsibilities outside of my job description, I serve in the advisory subcommittee conducting risk assessments of biotechnologies for the National Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries; as an ethics division coordinator for the University of Pretoria; as an invited peer reviewer at various science journals and Competitive Programme for Rated Researchers for the National Research Foundation of South Africa; and now as a Fellow and community member for ASAPbio.

Vanessa Bortoluzzi

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research. During my PhD in Biochemistry at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, I studied oxidative stress and energy metabolism, namely phosphoryl transference enzymes, in animal models of inborn errors of metabolism (IEM), focusing on the brain, and a possible interplay between redox and energy balance, also testing antioxidant interventions as adjuvant therapies for IEMs such as phenylketonuria. I am currently managing the publishing of papers related to my thesis and collaborations and working as copyeditor.

What are you excited about in science communication? What interests me the most in science communication are initiatives toward open science to promote collaborative, reproducible, and transparent science, fostering a healthy environment to share and discuss research findings.

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program? I chose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program to learn tools and skills to communicate with peers and a broader, diverse audience to promote the use of preprints with the support and guidance of an organized community.

Ask me about…Theories of knowledge (I am nowhere near being an expert, but this laid the foundation of my interest in science communication).

Christine Cucinotta

What is your current role? Tell us a bit about your line of research. Currently I am a postdoctoral fellow in Seattle WA, USA at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Toshi Tsukiyama’s lab. My work aims to uncover mechanisms of rapid and broad scale chromatin and transcription activation as cells exit from dormancy. 

What are you excited about in science communication? I am most excited about increasing inclusion and a sense of belonging in science through open science communication. I think if we can improve the way we talk about science and give access to all, science will move forward in a new and fantastic direction. 

Why did you choose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program? I chose to participate in the ASAPbio Fellows program because the way science is communicated needs to be changed. And ASAPbio has done tremendous work in opening the doors for better scientific communication. Preprints break away gatekeeping barriers to scientific careers that for-profit journals have held for so long. I believe that rapid access to scientific discovery is the best way to improve our scientific endeavors as a global society.

Ask me about…… art, animals, and video games. 

News roundup

Springer Nature expands its partnership with In Review to the Nature Research titles Nature Communications and Nature Biomedical Engineering: 
https://group.springernature.com/fr/group/media/press-releases/nature-research-in-review/18081530

Simine Vazire reflects on the shortcomings of journal peer review and the opportunities offered by peer review on preprints: 
https://www.wired.com/story/peer-reviewed-scientific-journals-dont-really-do-their-job/

MITPressand the Berkeley School of Public Health have launched Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 (RR:C19), an open access, overlay journal that will select and rapidly review COVID-19 preprints: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/06/29/new-mit-press-journal-debunk-bad-covid-19-research

On the topic of preprints, “how do I find them?” remains one of the most common questions. While several search tools already index preprints, many require researchers to look outside of their normal workflows. 

On June 9, the National Library of Medicine announced a pilot to include NIH-funded preprints in PubMed and PMC beginning this week. While the NIH has been encouraging the use of preprints for years, this launch, detailed in a post on the NLM Director’s blog, marks the first time these research objects have been discoverable alongside peer-reviewed articles in major NIH databases. Below, Kathryn Funk, Program Manager of PubMed Central (PMC) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), NIH, answers some of our questions about this project.

Join the June Community call

We will be holding our first ASAPbio Community call on 18 June 2020 at noon EST/5pm BST. Register for the call here.

At the call, we will be providing an overview of the #biopreprints2020 workshop and the recommendations that workshop attendees have been working on. We will also be seeking your feedback on the draft recommendations for different areas of preprint practice, we look forward to hearing your views!

We also hope the Community Calls will provide a forum for community members to exchange updates and get input on preprint-related projects, if you gave a project you’d like to talk about, please do add it to the agenda.

Temporary role: ASAPbio Project Coordinator

We’re looking for a project coordinator help convene online working groups and events about preprints in the media. To learn more, see the full posting here.

We’ve refreshed our FAQ

When we first launched our Preprint FAQ in 2016, the biology preprint landscape looked dramatically different from its present form, both in terms of its usage and prominence among researchers as well as its integration into scholarly communication workflows. While we’ve made periodic updates, the whole package was due for a refresh.

We’ve been honored to work with a group of attendees of #bioPreprints2020 to thoroughly revise the FAQ, both revisiting existing questions and adding new ones (including, for example, questions about patents, double blind review, setting journal policy on preprints, and a checklist for submitting preprints). If you haven’t visited in a while, check it out and let us know (by emailing jessica.polka@asapbio.org) what’s missing!

Thanks to Oya Rieger, Alex Mendonça, Emily Marchant, Iratxe Puebla, John Inglis, Martyn Rittman, Mate Palfy, Sowmya Swaminathan, Alice Meadows, Katie Funk, and Allison Leung for input into this revision.

#ShutDownSTEM

We’re taking time on Wednesday, June 10 to focus on learning and reflecting about how we can work to eradicate anti-Black racism and support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

News roundup

• Europe PMC to include the full text of COVID-19 preprints
• Will the pandemic permanently alter scientific publishing?
• Research on covid-19 is suffering “imperfect incentives at every stage”
• Problems with Preprints: Covering Rough-Draft Manuscripts Responsibly

Events

ASAPbio will participate in

• Jessica will discuss preprints in the time of COVID-19 in the session ‘Preprints and independent peer review services in crisis times’ on June 12 as part of the online EASE meeting.

Other events

• OASPA is hosting the webinar ‘Scholarly Communication & COVID-19: Closing the Loop for Effective Peer Review‘ on June 24.

May has been a busy month for ASAPbio, we have launched new resources related to preprints, and continued to engage with many colleagues in conversations about transparency in peer review and open science; details below.

Hello from Iratxe

Earlier this month I joined ASAPbio as Associate Director. I am thrilled to be part of ASAPbio’s important work to drive innovation and openness in science communication.

A little bit about me – After doing research in biotechnology for several years, I moved into publishing, I worked in the editorial team for the BMC series (BioMed Central) before joining PLOS to work on the journal PLOS ONE, most recently as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. I am also involved with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as Facilitation and Integrity Officer.

I have developed a passion for open research and a growing interest in preprints. I am excited to have an opportunity to contribute to initiatives towards greater transparency to the communication of life sciences research. 

I am looking forward to working with the members of the ASAPbio Community. In my immediate to-do list I have the upcoming start of the ASAPbio Fellows program and to look into how to most efficiently engage with all of you.

If you have comments, suggestions or feedback, I would love to hear from you, please feel free to contact me at iratxe.puebla@asapbio.org.

ASAPbio resource for preprints and rapid communication of COVID-19 research

With so much information around COVID-19 being released, it can be challenging to keep up to date with preprint activity related to the outbreak. To help you find the latest preprints on COVID-19 and to keep up to date with initiatives around the early sharing of research related to the pandemic, we have developed a dedicated page with a number of tools and resources, you can read more about it on the blog and browse the resources on this page. 

We welcome suggestions for additions and updates to the page, so if you have any items you would like to see included, please let us know.

Clarivate’s Master Journal list now displays Transpose information

Clarivate’s Master Journal list, a tool to assist authors in finding the journal that fits their needs, is now displaying Transpose information. Transpose is a community database of journal policies, it provides information on the type of peer review the journal operates, transparency around reviewer identities and reports, co-reviewing policies and preprint-related policies for over 3,000 journals.

The Master Journal list also integrates information from topfactor.org, a project by the Center for Open Science that catalogs journals’ implementation of the TOP (Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines).

We are delighted to see the data from Transpose reused to increase transparency and visibility for authors around journal policies.

ASAPbio Fellows Program

Applications recently closed for the ASAPbio Fellows program. We had a great response and we were really pleased to see the interest from the community in learning more about preprints. We have selected a cohort of 26 participants for the initial Fellows program cycle and we will be starting with an orientation session on June 3.

We look forward to providing further updates on the accomplishments of the program participants over the coming weeks.

News Roundup

• ‘A Pandemic Moves Peer Review to Twitter’
• ‘Scientific research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent’
• ‘How swamped preprint servers are blocking bad coronavirus research’
• ‘New from eLife: Invitation to submit to Preprint Review’
• ‘Scientists are drowning in COVID-19 papers. Can new tools keep them afloat?’
• EarthArXiv announces new partnership with California Digital Library to host earth sciences preprint service

Events

ASAPbio will participate in

• Jessica will participate in a panel on media coverage of preprints in a National Association of Science Writers webinar on June 3 (must be a member to register)
• Jessica will discuss preprints in the time of COVID-19 in the session ‘Preprints and independent peer review services in crisis times’ on June 12 as part of the online EASE meeting.

Other events

• The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) is holding an online version of its conference on June 21-23.

New on the blog

New resource: a directory preprint server policies and practices

ASAPbio’s response to the OSTP RFI on public access

The state of preprinting in biomedical sciences

Discouraging citations to predatory journals could be counterproductive

News from around the web

Publishers launch COVID-19 “rapid reviewer” list; encourage review transfer and highlighting preprints (2020-04-27)
PLOS Biology launches linked articles (2020-04-14)
SciELO preprints launches (2020-04-07)
Fast Grants for COVID-19 science require preprinting (2020-04-07)

(Header photo from Review Commons community call)

To get these newsletters via email, please sign up here.