Syllabus Home

Title: Understanding and Engaging with Preprints

Main/overall objective: By establishing what is a preprint and discussing the advantages and potential consequences of preprints to both science and scientists, participants can better understand how preprinting can integrate into the traditional journal-based system. Additionally, we will learn what we need to know and consider before preprinting, and how to post your preprint with a practical, step-by-step guide.

Section Content:

  1. Preprinting and its impact on the scientific communication, community, and progress
    1. What is a preprint?
    2. How preprints accelerate scientific communication
    3. How preprints benefit the scientific community
    4. Preprints and research assessment: benefits for scientific career progress
  2. Concerns and consequences of preprinting
    1. Quality control, peer review, and misinformation
    2. Journal policies and publication
    3. Scooping and open sharing
    4. Impacts on early career progress
  3. Logistics: Preprint components
    1. Manuscript and data preparation
    2. Preprint servers and data/code sharing platforms
    3. Journal policies and copyright licenses
    4. Initial screening
    5. Versioning and resubmission
  4. A practical, step-by-step guide for posting a preprint
    1. Overview of how to post a preprint
  5. Activity #1: Explore preprints in your field on bioRxiv.org or other relevant preprint server and identify key features of preprints discussed in the lesson
    1. For bioRxiv, explore the:
      1. landing page (Abstract, tweets, comments section)
      2. “Info/History” (DOI, number of revisions, copyright license type, Revision Summary comment)
      3. “Metrics” (Article usage over time)
    2. Links to deposited data and code
  6. Discussion #1: Are preprints a good platform as compared to traditional publishing? What are the top concerns or benefits of preprints according to the students?

Materials:

  1. Material 1 - Guidelines for Preprints
    1. Best practices for each section of the manuscript
    2. Checklist for preprints for what needs to be accomplished in terms of data availability
    3. Preprints_Preprint-Guidelines (Also available in Google drive)
  2. Material 2 - Powerpoint slides corresponding to the Lesson Plan
    1. Educator can take these powerpoint slides and make the slides their own
    2. Link to Slides (Also available in Google drive)
  3. Material 3 - Infographics of Preprints (created in 2020)
    1. Educator can hand out relevant information about preprints
    2. Infographic_What are preprints?
    3. Infographic_Fact check preprints
    4. Infographic_Preprints visibility
    5. Infographic_Licenses: How Open is your preprint?
    6. More information found here: https://asapbio.org/infographics** **

Lesson plan (~85 minutes):

Order/flow of lesson, the suggested order of doing things and associated materials for each section

Time (to devote to each section) Content Suggested materials
2 minutes Introduction PPT
10 minutes Preprinting and its impact on the scientific communication, community, and progress PPT

Infographic_What are preprints?
25 minutes Concerns and consequences of preprinting and Discussion #1 PPT

Infographic_Fact check preprints

Infographic_Preprints visibility
15 minutes Logistics: What you need and need to know before preprinting PPT

Infographic_Licenses: How Open is your preprint?
20 minutes Activity #1 PPT
20 minutes A practical, step-by-step guide for posting a preprint PPT

Guidelines for Preprints

Reflection:

  1. Key questions to ask at the end to test that the objectives have been met, e.g. do the students feel that preprints are a good platform compared to traditional publishing?
    • Idea is to have a little bit of a discussion to recap what was learnt.

Resources:

Authors:

Aleksandra Petelski & Gilbert Kibet-Rono

Emails: aleksandra.petelski@gmail.com and gilykibe@gmail.com

Please contact for further questions or issues with the lesson material.