Resources

Ensuring that public feedback on preprints is focused, appropriate, specific and transparent (or FAST) will help to develop a thriving culture for reviewing and commenting on preprints.

We have seen a number of initiatives arise in recent years aiming to tackle concerns around the reproducibility of published findings. Researchers in the life sciences now have a number of tools at their disposal to boost the reproducibility of their science and preprints have emerged as an instrumental element within this toolkit. Preprints broaden the when, by whom and how of the review and feedback on research compared to the journal publication process, help address publication bias, and can play an important role as a vehicle towards open science practices. Preprints hold further untapped potential to close the gap between discovery and dissemination, and to accelerate the path to a more reproducible research ecosystem.

In this commentary (paywalled), Jessica Polka and colleagues call on journals to sign a pledge to make reviewers’ anonymous comments part of the official scientific record.

ASAPbio organized a workshop in August 2016 with technology and infrastructure providers to discuss technical aspects of how preprints in the life sciences might look and how they would interact with existing standards or platforms. This document is both a report on the results of this workshop and an exploration of potential next steps.