Bring preprints to biology!: Take action today to drive the adoption of preprints in the life sciences and medicine

[npscience]

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At a glance

• Submission Name: Bring preprints to biology!
• Contact Lead: [email protected]
• Issue Area: #OpenAccess, #OpenData, #OpenResearch
• Region: #NorthernAmerica, #Europe
• Issue Type: #Project
• Types of Support Needed: #Advocacy_and_Policy, #Communications, #Community_GrassrootsOrganizing, #EventPlanning, #GraphicDesign
• External Site Link (optional - primarily for projects): asapbio.org

Description

Preprints are manuscripts shared online before peer review. This helps to speed up the dissemination of new results and broadens the community of people who can read, review and engage with the latest research. While the number of preprints being posted about life sciences is growing rapidly, this is still only a tiny fraction (1-2%) of the number of publications being shared in peer-reviewed journals, so there are a lot of manuscripts that could have been shared earlier and more openly! The most effective way for researchers to learn about and consider engaging with preprints is to hear about it from a fellow scientist that they trust. At ASAPbio (asapbio.org), Naomi and Jessica work to support researchers to drive the adoption of preprinting in the life sciences and medicine - and you can help! At PREreview (prereview.org), Monica, Daniela and Sam support researchers to engage with preprints and peer review through journal clubs. Join Naomi and Monica at our preprint helpdesk to find out more about preprints, discover how you can help by telling your peers (from stickers to conference slides to journal clubs), and become a preprint advocate (and ASAPbio ambassador) today!

What are we working on during the do-a-thon? What kinds of support do we need?

Learn about preprints, set up a preprint journal club, add a slide to your next talk, create an academic poster to submit your next conference, sign up to become an ASAPbio ambassador, tell us how we can best support you as a preprint advocate, design new ways to drive adoption of preprinting, collect stickers!

From us, you will learn how you can help to raise awareness of preprints in your research field, institute and other communities you are part of. You can find out about the ASAPbio ambassador program. We will help you take your first action today!
From you, we hope to learn your thoughts, hopes and questions about preprints, and how we might support you as a preprint advocate and/or ASAPbio ambassador.

How can others contribute?

This is not limited to the doathon: please reach out to me at any point if you are interested in preprints for the life sciences and biomedical research via the email address above! :)

This post is part of the OpenCon Do-A-Thon. Not sure what's going on? Head here.

[npscience]

Hi everyone, we're on table 13, the best number, also working on #72 if you're curious about journal policies on preprinting and peer review.

In person doers, come by for chocolate and sweets! Virtual, please @ me on this issue with any questions and to let me know you're in for the ride! :)

[Monsauce]

We just had a request for a live streamed journal club come by at Table 13! Do you want to host your own live streamed preprint journal club - PREreview can help! Fill out the following form!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdlpfxK0XEeVbUD7aHBKLf6g7rOups-uS2ZytpDKdHNBHwNZg/viewform?usp=sf_link

[npscience]

Having a fascinating convo re benefits, concerns with and needs for infrastructure around preprints with @DomRoche @ashleydfarley @Monsauce :

• need metrics (e.g. altmetrics) to be consolidated between preprint and publication so that can represent an accurate overall figure next to the publication reference in a CV (if just use the number associated with a publication, currently you lost the preprint number; if show the total, currently you might be double counting)
• it would be helpful to link from publication to preprint in a way that also shows number of interactions (e.g. comments) on the preprint version so reader can dig into that history if there are comments there (and not if the number is zero)
• some concerns re posting preprints include giving less ethical researchers a heads-up that you've interrogated their work, that you're saying something that goes against the status quo. Hard work to improve integrity of some research areas.

[npscience]

Irene @iramosp, Ibraheem @ibsali33 and Angela @zebraelement joined us for discussion and we identified some ways we could support the community to discuss openness (and some of the key values behind preprints):

• how to have the first convo to introduce preprints? how to know if the other person has fully understood the definition and implications of preprinting?
• want to host discussions and workshops but would like training on how to do this. Angela at Addgene noted that the reproducibility workshops Addgene and others have been supporting and developing will include resources like videos of previous people delivering the workshop, to help with learning this skill. Naomi thinks this training area is something the community could offer, and she could offer this herself.
• Ibraheem is making an OA zine and would like to show students places they can share their outputs more regularly to demonstrate productivity -- could include list of preprint servers.

That's a wrap here!

[npscience]

Update on OpenCon community call, Nov 28

• Preprints are complete scientific manuscripts shared online before peer review, and ASAPbio is a non-profit organisation supporting the adoption of preprinting in biology.
• We are looking at how to support and grow the community of researchers interested in using preprints (whether posting their own work or reading, reviewing and citing other people’s preprints), and so it was really useful to have deep conversations during the doathon with researchers interested in preprints — thanks to Dominique, Ibrahim, Irene, Angela, Ben, Stefano, Ashley, Monica, Yayo and many more people I met in Toronto! These convos highlighted various points for me: from considering how to support people to host workshops and have conversations with their peers or senior staff, to finding out about some of the tricky issues when deciding whether to preprint or not. I haven’t finished following up with people yet — I’m so sorry, but emails will come!! Thank you for your patience.
• Since OpenCon, I have continued to ask lots of questions, and am currently interviewing current ASAPbio ambassadors, to understand what’s next for ASAPbio’s work to support the community with preprinting: do we supply training for talking with your PI about preprinting your next manuscript, do we provide a peer support platform for ambassadors and advocates to make it easier to keep pushing, do we focus on creating informational resources to help differentiate between different preprint servers, all these are options but we want to design based on the community’s needs.
• If you’re interested in getting involved with preprints in biology, you can sign up to be an ambassador at http://asapbio.org/asapbio-ambassadors (this page also shows the current ambassadors, so you can see if there is someone local to you to connect with!) Or you can reach out to me directly by email: naomi [dot] penfold [at] asapbio [dot] org