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WELCOME to Preprint Journal Club!

We are scientists and ASAPbio Ambassadors who want to encourage other scientists to post their scientific outputs as Preprints. We hope to do that by making it easier to start and run a Preprint Journal Club.

What are preprints?

Preprints are complete pieces of scientific work that have not yet been peer reviewed or published. Preprints are often the same manuscripts that are submitted to a journal for peer review, but are stored on freely accessible public servers such that they become available to the whole web community within 1-2 days from submission.

Learn more about preprints:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint
https://www.authorea.com/users/2/articles/169587-the-preprint-citation-bump
https://researchpreprints.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjxRAhdbJu8&feature=youtu.be&t=5m36s

How can preprints help fix the problems in publishing in biology?

Publishing in the biological sciences has become a much lenghtier process over the past 30 years and can take 1-2 years from journal submission to final publication. During this peer review process the manuscript can change substatially, which can be beneficial but can also remove information that can be useful to other scientists. Furthermore, once a manuscript is published, it can often be unavailable unless you pay subscription fees. Preprints can solve these problems as they are free and immediately available versions of manuscripts that will later undergo peer review in a journal. In addition, the public servers store all versions of the manuscript so data is never lost, even when a subsequent version no longer includes that data.

How can preprint journal clubs help?

68% of the ASAPbio survey respondents felt that commentary/evaluation for preprints would make preprints more valuable to the scientific community. This project aims to develop resources to encourage the hosting of preprint journal clubs at research institutions worldwide. By encouraging the reading and evaluation of preprints among groups of scientists, we hope to increase the awareness, usage, and value of preprints in the biological sciences. Additionally, we hope to tackle the assumption that preprints cannot be used responsibly because they haven't been through the journal peer review process. Furthermore, we hope preprint journal clubs will provide opportunities for early career scientists to practice reviewing scientific literature and writing feedback in a professional and constructive manner. These are key skills that should be developed by all scientists. By developing a Preprint Review Worksheet and Preprint Journal Club Guidelines, we hope to facilitate the easy uptake of the preprint journal club practice in institutes around the world. Please join us and help us with our project!

How can you get involved?

For guidlines on how to contribute to this project, please check out oun CONTRIBUTING.md file.
You can also email us at [email protected].

Get involved in the wider preprint community projects by signing up as an ASAPbio Ambassador. To join the ASAPbio Ambassadors Slack Team, email [email protected] to request an invite.