Who were there?

What are preprints?

~50% of the room were aware of what preprints are:
There is a lot of information out there about preprints, but a great place to start is with this video. You can also find more information at the ASAPbio website (see below).

What is ASAPbio?

ASAPbio is a scientist-driven initiative to explore the productive use of preprints in biology. They are a non-profit lead by Jessica Polka, with support from Ron Vale, and since February 2016 they have catalyzed the change in culture and acceptance of preprints in biology and the biomedical sciences. Their main goals are: to encourage stakeholder support for preprints (e.g. publishers, funders and institutions);  to enable infrastructure and services for preprint submission, discoverability, and use; and to help educate and change the culture around preprint acceptance and credibilty of use. More information can be found at ASAPbio.org.

Participants' questions and concerns:

Are preprints the final article? An earlier stage?

What are the benefits of preprints?

            - Preprints are not the same as publication, but they are accepted as timely evidence of research progress
            - Funders are now implicit that it is not enough to say that a manuscript is “in submission” as you can post a preprint instead

Does it devalue novelty? Eg where you publish?

How is a preprint structured? Are there criteria for how it should be presented?

Is the understanding of the use of preprints evolving?

Could preprints fuel a "fake news" problem?

Is it ok to post a preprint without your PIs/collaborator's permission?

Are there standards for preprints and preprint servers? 

Why are there multiple preprint servers?

Can you publish negative findings?

How can we increase the discovery of preprints? Are they just lost to the ether?

Due to the OA nature of preprints, why should we pay to publish OA?

Do we need journals if the future is that we post preprints and then receive community peer review - do we need a journal to put a stamp on it?

PREreview: Post, Read, and Engage with preprint reviews