ASAPbio (Accelerating Science and Publication in biology) is a scientist-driven nonprofit working to address this problem by promoting innovation and transparency in life sciences communication.
In 2015, ASAPbio founder Ron Vale published an analysis of the increasing time to first-author publication among graduate students at UCSF, and proposed a more widespread use of preprints in the life sciences as a potential solution. He recruited three fellow members of Rescuing Biomedical Research (Daniel Colon-Ramos, Harold Varmus, and Jessica Polka) to organize a meeting on the topic. Held at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in early 2016, the meeting concluded with broad consensus among attendees (among them researchers, funders, and representatives from journals and publishers) that preprints could productively contribute to the research ecosystem. As follow up from the meeting, ASAPbio began serving as a dedicated organization to coordinate efforts promoting the adoption of preprints in the life sciences.
ASAPbio subsequently received grant funding, incorporated as a nonprofit, and, in 2017, initiated a second area of programming focusing on increasing transparency in peer review.