Preprints are a version of a scientific paper that precedes publication in a peer-reviewed journal. By uploading a preprint to a server such as arXiv.org or bioRxiv.org, scientists can share their research with the scientific community immediately, receive feedback from the community prior to publication, and establish a permanent DOI for their research. Although preprints have long been popular in many scientific fields such as physics, only recently have preprints started to catch on in the life sciences.
As preprints are building momentum in the Life Sciences, many scientists still fear negative consequences (e.g., “Can I still publish in journal “x” if I upload my work to preprint server?”). The good news is that universities, funding agencies and journals have started establishing policies accommodating preprints in the life sciences, which is encouraging more scientists to submit preprints and encourages more open science. In this webinar we will discuss how journals, universities and other platforms are supporting preprints in the life sciences.
Images: Brianne Kent, Samantha Hindle, Mate Palfy, Bernd Pulverer.
Speakers
Brianne Kent, Webinar Chair; eLife ECAG Chair, Postdoctoral Fellow University of British Columbia
Brianne Kent is Chair of the eLife Early-Career Advisory group (ECAG) and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. She joined the ECAG as an inaugural member in 2014 while she was completing her PhD in neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on Alzheimer's disease with the goal of identifying novel biomarkers and treatments. Brianne is a strong advocate for Open Science and is the ECAG representative for the eLife Ambassadors' Preprints working group.
Samantha Hindle, Content Lead at bioRxiv, co-Founder PREreview.org
Samantha Hindle is Content Lead at bioRxiv, a non-profit preprint server for the life sciences, and co-founder of PREreview.org, a preprint journal club review platform geared towards promoting the training (and acknowledgement) of early career researchers in peer review. Samantha has a background in Cell Biology and Neuroscience and, until recently, was an early career researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Through her involvement in the Mozilla Science Lab and OpenCon communities, Samantha has seen the benefits of working openly, and is passionate about enabling policy change that will align the current academic culture with Open Science practices.
Mate Palfy, Community manager, preLights
Mate is from Budapest, Hungary, where he studied Biology at the Eotvos Lorand University. Following a research year in Vienna at MFPL for his Master’s, he pursued his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, in the lab of Nadine Vastenhouw. Here, he worked on the regulation of zygotic genome activation in zebrafish embryos. Mate has previously published part of his research on bioRxiv, and regularly follows and shares the latest research, published in the form of preprints, on social media.
Mate has recently started working as a Community Manager for preLights, a preprint highlighting service that was launched by The Company of Biologists, this February. His main task is to build and maintain the preLights site and to support the team of preLighters, who contribute the preprint highlights content to the site. He is excited to see how preprints will shape the future of publishing.
Bernd Pulverer, Chief Editor, The EMBO Journal
Following undergraduate studies in Cambridge, Bernd received his PhD in 1992 from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London, for uncovering post-translational regulation of the transcription factors c-Jun and c-Myc by the JNK and MAP kinases. He carried out postdoctoral research at the Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle and at the University of Innsbruck. Bernd was associate and then senior editor at Nature from 1999 until 2002 and subsequently chief editor of Nature Cell Biology. He has been the chief editor of The EMBO Journal and Head of Scientific Publications at EMBO since 2009.
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