ASAPbio

Background: ASAPbio started a grassroots community of researchers interested in improving the publication ecosystem. Incorporated in 2017 as a nonprofit, it promotes more widespread use of preprints and transparency in peer review. The idea arose from research by ASAPbio founder Ron Vale and gained traction with support from Daniel Colon-Ramos, Harold Varmus and Jessica Polka, researchers involved in the Rescuing Biomedical Research initiative.

Mission: ASAPbio envisions life sciences communication in which all papers and other outputs are shared rapidly and without restrictions on access or reuse, and open and constructive exchanges take place on research products at all stages.

Community over Commercialization:

“There are ways to achieve open access without commercialization or with minimal commercialization. And among those ways is using preprints and peer review services to achieve a community-driven model in which research is first published, and then reviewed and curated afterwards. It really separates the costs of dissemination and organizing peer review from a lot of the other markers that get wrapped up in the system like prestige.”

“There's so much movement toward open access globally. But I think it's important that that movement happens in a way that supports the needs of the research community and the public. Commercialization has promoted both the subscription model and also some models of open access that don't necessarily suit everyone's needs by creating barriers to publishing.”

“Change happens in communities. Our entire model of change is that we need people who are going to be champions within their own local communities in order to create that change. Having a strong community is essential in order for useful new practices, and new ideas to propagate. From that perspective, we try to create a community within ASAPbio, one that encourages and fosters people to actually go out into their own communities and work there. It's really in that context of leveraging connections that change is going to happen.”

“We are driven by our board of directors, who in the beginning, would nominate and select future members. Recently, we’ve begun doing more open calls for our board…specifically calls for early career researchers. The community has been an incredible resource for us. We have engaged the community more in strategic planning. We are helping move together in the same direction to create change.”

-Jessica Polka, executive director, ASAPbio