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FAQs about this newsletter

-Why did you feel the need to do this?

My coworkers, friends, and family will tell you that I send them too many links to preprints about frivolous subjects. So, I started this newsletter to avoid spamming them. All I want is for you to share in something that made me giggle or say “wow.”

-What does this newsletter consist of?

Once every week or two, I’ll send out some links to my favorite preprints with short blurbs explaining why they really got to me. Additionally, I freelance a lot and am not an idiot, so I’ll use the second half of the newsletter to plug my own work. I will not be highlighting anything about the novel coronavirus and instead like to think of this newsletter as anything but that.

-What is BioRxiv?

Glad you asked! It’s a preprint repository (pronounced bio-archive because the x is actually a Greek Chi) for life science research that hasn’t yet been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal. It is my rock, my muse. I spend too much time reading the daily digests that they send me.

-Does writing about these preprints in your newsletter mean you think they’re automatically great science and you wholeheartedly endorse them?

No! The peer review process, though extremely imperfect, still serves a purpose in that it lets experts vet the science they know best. Unless the preprint I am sharing is about carbon source preference hierarchies among E. coli and related bacterial species, I am not an expert on the science it details. Mainly, I’d like to appreciate the preprint for what it is, in its own context. Preprint for the sake of preprint.

-I’m a science journalist, too. Can I pitch a story based off of preprint from your newsletter?

Yes! One of the reasons I’m starting this newsletter is because I think there is so much great science being conducted, and I only have the bandwidth to cover a tiny fraction of it.