Preprints in Motion

To celebrate the end of Peer Review Week (2023) we recorded a live episode of the podcast with Stefano Bertozzi from Rapid Reviews to talk all things preprint peer review. No editing on this one!

This week we discuss the academic career of a young PI with Charlotte Odendall @codendall , a Sir Henry Dale Fellow at King’s College London. Join us for a conversation on starting a group with a Fellowship, how martial arts help with stress, and why we all need a friend who tells us “just do it”. Charlotte Odendall: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/odendall-group  This episode was hosted, produced,...

It’s our 2 year birthday this month! To celebrate we take a trip back to the past and discuss the history of preprint servers with Matthew Cobb, a Professor at the University of Manchester.  Find Matthew’s BBC podcast for more about the great science publishing scandal https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004l7k If you want to learn more about the prehistory of preprint servers you can read the full...

This week we discuss all things ECR with Mayank Chugh & Gracielle Higino, two current postdocs who are leading the efforts in fighting for a better environment for ECRs in academia.   Gracielle is an ASAPbio fellow and program co-ordinator at BIOS2, a community of researchers who are exploring and applying modern-day computational and quantitative techniques to address the challenges of biodiv...

This week we discuss the academic career of a young PI with Thibaut Brunet @ thibaut_brunet , a G5 Group Leader at Institut Pasteur. Join us for a conversation on eating spiders, dancing creatures of the ocean, and the challenges of applying for and starting a group in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thibaut Brunet: https://research.pasteur.fr/en/team/evolutionary-cell-biology-and-evolution-o...

This week we discuss hot and cold fibrosis with Shoval Miyara, a PhD student at the Weizmann Institute of Science.  Find shoval on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/MiyaraShoval ) Read the full preprint -> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.01.522422v1   This episode was produced by Jonny Coates and edited by Camila Valenzuela.  If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button a...

In the PI’s seat - Nicolás Rascovan This week we discuss the academic career of a young PI with Nicolás Rascovan @NRascovan , a G5 Group Leader at Institut Pasteur. Nicolás Rascovan: https://research.pasteur.fr/en/team/microbial-paleogenomics/ https://nicorascovan.wordpress.com/ This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Dr. Camila Valenzuela. If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe...

This week we discuss synthetic carbon fixation, running a lab as a postdoc and eLife’s new publishing model with Sebastian Wenk, a Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. Read the full preprint -> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.28.509898v1.full Sebastian -> https://www.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/person/50878/2132817 Arren Bar-Evan -> https://arren-bar-ev...

This week we discuss the big changes occurring over at eLife with Editor in Chief Mike Eisen & original ECAG member Devang Mehta. From Jan 2023, eLife is  focusing on public reviews and assessments of preprints and eliminating accept/reject decisions after peer review. Read more about this new model here: https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/54d63486/elife-s-new-model-changing-the-way-y...

DISCLAIMER – These servers were reviewed from the approach of a first use instance and may not accurately reflect the full capabilities of each server. Moreover, any comments are opinions only. Preprint servers. There’s an incredibly interesting history behind them (watch this space for more on that next year) but as of 2022 there are over 50 different preprint servers. No wonder it feels like the...

This week we discuss RNA editing in cephalopods with postdoc Kavita Rangan. Read the full preprint -> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.25.509396v1.full This episode was produced by Jonny Coates and edited by Tala Noun & John Howard. If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review (on Apple Podcasts or Spotify). If you love what we are trying to do t...

This week we chat with Daniela Saderi, she is the Co-Founder and Director of PREreview ( @prereview_ ), an open project with the mission to bring more equity and transparency to the evaluation of research content, giving systematically excluded researchers better ways to find, train, and contribute to peer review. In her role, she is responsible for partnership and community building, fundraising,...

This week we discuss modeling cell-cell collisions with Pedrom Zadeh, a 4th year PhD student at Johns Hopkins University . We learn how to distill basic biology into models and just how important and useful modeling can be as a tool. Read the full preprint -> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.13.491710v1.full Twitter thread on the preprint -> https://twitter.com/diffusiveblob/s...

This week we discuss how cells can divide without nuclei and why this happens with Anand Bakshi, Fabio Echegaray Iturra ( @fabioechegaray ) & Mustafa G. Aydogan @AydoganLab . We also highlight Drosophila as an amazing model system that just keeps on giving and speak about the importance of preprints in collaboration and  grant applications. We also discuss the limitations of preprints and...

This week we discuss mitochondrial DNA and its importance in aging with Amy Vandiver ( @AmyVandiver2 ). We also highlight a new method to quickly sequence full length mitochondrial DNA allowing for mitochondrial genome comparisons and the understanding of the diversity between mitochondrial DNA.  As usual we also discuss the process of pre-printing, preLights and how they can generate collabo...

This week we discuss a different take on sharing scientific findings with Alex Freeman ( @alex_freeman ), creator of Octopus @science_octopus . Octopus is resetting the incentive structure for research sharing, putting the emphasis on assessing the quality of what people are doing within the lab. Find out more here https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/octopus-creating-a-new-primary-research-record-f...

This week we discuss macrophage heterogeneity with Graham Heieis ( @GrahamHeieis ), a Post-doc at the Leiden University Medical Center ( @LUMC_Leiden ) in the Netherlands. We speak to him about mass cytometry and spectral flow cytometry and their use to investigate heterogeneity of tissue specific macrophages with regards to metabolism. We then have our usual chat about preprints, moving labs from...

We’ve gone full circle!! Join us this week as we talk to Michele Avissar-Whiting ( @maw_tweets ), one of our first ever guests on this podcast and Editor in Chief of Research Square, as we discuss what happens to a preprint when the downstream publication gets retracted, how the papers can be linked to the preprint and if the preprint should be withdrawn. Michele talks to us about her recent paper...

This week we discuss cilia length, ciliopathies and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (also known as ‘Chlamy’) with Brae Briggs ( @BiggeBrae ), a graduate student from at Dartmouth ( @dartmouth ), Geisel School of Medicine ( @GeiselMed ). We find out about a range of ciliopathies, the main composition of cilia as well as using ‘Chlamy’ as a model to study cilia length. We also discuss the difficulties of...

We’re 1 year old today! And to help celebrate our Birthday we have an extra long conversation with the incomparable Prachee Avasthi ( @PracheeAC ), Associate Professor at Dartmouth, President of ASAPbio and CSO & co-founder of Arcadia Science). We discuss everything from Prachee’s career journey, role in promoting preprints and open science with ASAPbio and how she came to co-found Arcadia Sci...

This week we discuss heart dedifferentiation and regeneration with Avraham Shakked @abingtonSA a final year PhD student, at the Weizmann Institute of Science, @WeizmannScience . We speak about their ingenious mouse model which uses transient and temporarily controlled ERBB2 expression which allows dedifferentiation and redifferentiation of cardiomyocytes. Using this model they examined the differe...

This week we discuss placental inflammation and heart development with postdoc Eleanor Jayne Ward and PI Suchita Nadkarni ( @SciSuchita ) from Queen Mary, University of London. In this preprint, the authors show that during embryonic heart development, neutrophils (innate immune cells) can sometimes cause placental inflammation. This inflammation leads to a loss of barrier function. In turn, this...

This week we discuss a population of stem cells called tanycytes which line hypothalamus in the brain with Alex Moore ( @alexthemessiah ) an Operational Research Analyst in the Civil Service & Kavitha Chinnaiya a Post Doc from the University of Sheffield ( @sheffielduni ) .  Tanycytes are population of cells which line the 3rd ventricle in the hypothalamus, self renew and give rise to neu...

CW:// This week's episode touches on some themes revolving around caloric restriction which some listeners may find difficult. This week we speak to Ben Thomas @BenThomasSci , a final year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh @EdinburghUn i about the benefits of caloric restriction, the impact in male and female mice as well as the effect of age. We highlight the ingrained sexisim within the...

This week we discuss how journalists approach using preprints with Alice Fleerackers ( @FleerackersA ), a PhD student at the Simon Fraser University ( @SFU ). She tells us how she went behind the scenes and to examine the decision making process of journalists on whether to use preprints or not, how they contextualized the science, and what practices they use to evaluate preprints. We discuss the...