Preprint’s Greatest Hits

The “Berg JM”of “Berg et al,” former NIH NIGMS Director Jeremy Berg heads up the all-star authors list in a new “Science” paper reporting on the future of preprint servers in the life sciences. ASCB photo John Fleischman

The “Berg JM”of “Berg et al,” former NIH NIGMS Director Jeremy Berg heads up the all-star authors list in a new “Science” paper reporting on the future of preprint servers in the life sciences. ASCB photo John Fleischman

For research biologists who have been living under a rock or finishing a grant application for the last six months, good morning and welcome to the world of preprint servers. Or at least you are welcome to the big debate about uploading your latest, still-to-be-reviewed, still-to-be-journal-published manuscript to an open access, public server for comment from your peers.

 

Preprint posting has been standard practice for years in physics and math, but its use in cell and molecular biology has been limited. That may be about to change or so say the 70 or so “invited” participants in a two-day meeting held in February at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, MD. The May 20th issue of Science has what amounts to their official report on preprints in the life sciences. And for those who’ve missed the whole preprint hullabaloo, reading the paper by Berg et al. is your chance to catch up on the details, hopes, and rationales for the wider use of preprint servers in research biology.

 

Whatever its future citation score, Berg et al. is no ordinary paper. The list of authors is a who’s who of modern research biology with representatives from all the key communities—the lab bench, scientific publishing, and bioscience funders, both NIH and private philanthropies. For example, Berg JM, is Jeremy Berg, now at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the former director of the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Going through the bylines, you will find ASCB members aplenty including two Nobel laureates, Carol Greider and Marty Chalfie, two former ASCB presidents, Marc Kirschner and Ron Vale, plus the editor of ASCB’s journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC), David Drubin. Other ASCB celebrities include Maria Leptin, the Director of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and Ruth Lehmann, who is at the New York University School of Medicine and who recently finished a term on the ASCB Council.

 

Other authors of Berg et al. include representatives from Nature Cell Biology, the Rockefeller University Press (publisher of the Journal of Cell Biology), and EMBO Press. From the funding side is Philip Bourne from the Office of the NIH Director plus reps from a number of private foundations and trusts including the Simons, the Gordon & Betty Moore, and the Wellcome. You can read Berg et al. to find out why, by and large, all feel that preprint servers are a great and coming thing for the life sciences or you can just admire the collective firepower that gathered for two days in February to hammer out this consensus. Those seeking more background can check out ASCB’s recent literature on the literature of preprints.

About the Author:


John Fleischman was the ASCB Senior Science Writer from 2000 to 2016. Best unpaid perk of the job? Working with new grad students and Nobel Prize winners.