Preprints and MDPI Response to the ASAPbio Request for Applications
Preprints Editorial Office
02 May 2017
Earlier this year, ASAPbio, a group advocating for wider use of preprints in the life sciences, put out a request for applications to run a comprehensive preprint aggregator for the subject area run by a governance body representing academics.
As a supporter of rapid communication of research in all fields, we support the proposed plan and have submitted an application that would build an aggregator of preprints across all disciplines at preprints.org. Posting preprints puts the announcement of research results into the hands of researchers. The aggregator would go a step further to create a community led, open and transparent platform that would help to accelerate the dissemination of research. This can only be a good thing!
To assist with the challenge of converting all preprints to XML, we have enlisted the support of ContentMine, a Cambridge based software company headed by Prof. Peter Murray-Rust, and Fidus Writer, an online collaborative writing tool developed at the University of Bonn and GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. These will enhance the function of MDPI's existing XML conversion software to produce an open tool that could be used by any preprint server.
As a supporter of rapid communication of research in all fields, we support the proposed plan and have submitted an application that would build an aggregator of preprints across all disciplines at preprints.org. Posting preprints puts the announcement of research results into the hands of researchers. The aggregator would go a step further to create a community led, open and transparent platform that would help to accelerate the dissemination of research. This can only be a good thing!
To assist with the challenge of converting all preprints to XML, we have enlisted the support of ContentMine, a Cambridge based software company headed by Prof. Peter Murray-Rust, and Fidus Writer, an online collaborative writing tool developed at the University of Bonn and GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. These will enhance the function of MDPI's existing XML conversion software to produce an open tool that could be used by any preprint server.
