Preprints are revolutionising the way we share and communicate scientific findings. They have numerous benefits and advantages for all stakeholders but particularly for ECRs. If you are an ECR you need to be posting preprints. If you train or are responsible for ECRs then you need to be making sure you facilitate preprinting of their work.
But how can you get more involved in this fast moving world?
Use preprints
OK I’ve just mentioned this one but not only should you be posting preprints yourself but you should be reading and citing other preprints in your field. This will keep you 1–2 years ahead of those who only read published papers. When you do publish, choose open access journals and those that are more friendly to changing the broken system.
Host/take part in preprint journal clubs
Journal clubs can be useful and are often a staple in “training” for ECRs within a bioscience department. Stop picking CNS papers because they’re flashy and start using preprints to be at the true cutting edge of your field. To make them even more useful you should spend a little extra effort on writing up the discussion as a comment for the authors. This way your journal club is helping to advance preprint use and also advance science by helping authors refine and improve their work.
Share data and methods openly
Tied into using preprint but if you have a dataset or useful methods, upload these to repositories when you post the preprint. Sharing code openly can even lead to new collaborations and significantly improve your own work — we found this with our COVID papers where sharing openly led to a collaboration for the first paper and then posting a preprint led to our second paper being co-published, again making the conclusions much stronger.
Educate yourself (and others)
It’s so surprising how many academics (including “esteemed” professors) who just don’t understand the history of our publishing system or where peer review comes from. This is vital in understanding the problems within the system and why it needs to change. There’s a lot of survivorship bias in academia and looking back can help us move forwards.
Follow open science leaders
Some of the brilliant people who are leading the change towards open science and preprint use are very active on social media. On BlueSky, you can follow the Preprints and Metascience feeds.
Get involved with communities
This is perhaps one of the best ways of getting more involved in preprints and open science.
PREreview — community and training focussed on increasing equity in preprint peer review. Recommended platform for uploading community or journal club reviews of preprints.
preLights — preprint highlighting that allows you to write about interesting preprints and collaborate with others in the community. An excellent initial (active) step into the world of preprints.
Preprints in Motion — podcast focussed specifically on highlighting preprints and the ECRs behind them in addition to discussing the wider issues in academia. Contact preprintsinmotion@gmail.com
Talk to co-workers about preprints
Now you’re using preprints, you’re writing about them or have been involved in the fellowship programs above. Get out there and tell everyone why they should be preprinting and making science a better place for all! Spread the gospel!
If you’ve posted an interesting preprint or read one recently you can also highlight it to Preprints in Motion for a full podcast episode focussed on the preprint and ECR.
Attend open science events
There are many open science events you could attend such as conferences and workshops from FORCE11 and various universities (e.g. Sheffield University’s OpenFest).
Write about preprints
This may be through preLights but can also be more casual or opinion pieces in science magazines and journals. I’d strongly recommend preLights because not only is it a great community but it helps establish your own name in the preprint sphere.
Start your own initiative
We’re always happy to discuss ideas and provide support in some exciting new initiative led by you!
Rippling Ideas 