Wikipedia

Preprint

For broader coverage of this topic, seeManuscript (publishing).

Inacademic publishing,apreprintis a version of ascholarlyorscientific paperthat precedes formalpeer reviewand publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly orscientific journal.The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version availablefree,before or after a paper is published in a journal.

Typical publishing workflow for an academic journal article (preprint,postprint,andpublished) withopen accesssharing rights perSHERPA/RoMEO.

History

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Since 1991, preprints have increasingly been distributed electronically on theInternet,rather than as paper copies. This has given rise to massive preprint databases such asarXivandHAL (open archive)etc. toinstitutional repositories.The sharing of preprints goes back to at least the 1960s, when theNational Institutes of Healthcirculated biological preprints. After six years the use of theseInformation Exchange Groupswas stopped, partially because journals stopped accepting submissions shared via these channels.[1]In 2017, theMedical Research Councilstarted supporting citations of preprints in grant and fellowship applications,[2]andWellcome Truststarted accepting preprints in grant applications.[3]

In February 2017, a coalition of scientists and biomedical funding bodies including the National Institutes of Health, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust launched a proposal for a central site for life-sciences preprints.[4][5][6]In February 2017,SciELOannounced plans to set up a preprints server – SciELO Preprints.[7]In March 2017, the National Institutes for Health issued a new policy encouraging research preprint submissions.[8][9]In April 2017,Center for Open Scienceannounced that it will be launching six new preprint archives.[10]At the end of the 2010s, libraries and discovery tools increasingly integrateUnpaywalldata, which indexes millions of preprints and othergreen open accesssources and manages to serve over half of the requests by users without the need for subscriptions.[11]

During the early months of theCOVID-19 pandemic,the need for published research on the disease spurred a wave of research articles being released as preprints,[12]bypassing the peer-review and publication process, which was proving too slow in the context of an active and novel pandemic. The release of COVID-related preprint articles, along with other COVID-related articles published by traditional journals, contributed to the largest ever single-year increase in scholarly articles.[13]

Role

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Academic practices

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See also:List of academic journals by preprint policy

Publication of manuscripts in a peer-reviewed journal often takes weeks, months or even years from the time of initial submission, owing to the time required by editors and reviewers to evaluate and critique manuscripts, and the time required by authors to address critiques. The need to quickly circulate current results within a scholarly community has led researchers to distribute documents known as preprints, which are manuscripts that have yet to undergopeer review.The immediate distribution of preprints allows authors to receive earlyfeedbackfrom their peers, which may be helpful in revising and preparing articles for submission.[14]Preprint are also used to demonstrate the precedence of the discoveries and a way to protect the intellectual property (a prompt availability of the discovery can be used to block patenting or discourage competing parties).

Most publishers allow work to be published to preprint servers before submission. A minority of publishers decide on a case-by-case basis or interpret theIngelfinger Ruleto disqualify from submission.[15]Yet, many journals prohibit or discourage the use of preprints in the references as they are not considered as credible sources.

Some journal-independent review services (Peerage of Science,Peer Community In,Review Commons,eLifePreprint Review) offerpeer reviewon preprints. These peer-reviews are either a first step before publication in a journal (Peerage of Science, Review Commons,eLifePreprint Review) or result in a formal editorial decision (Peer Community In) without precluding submission in journals.[16]

Stages of printing

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While a preprint is an article that has not yet undergone peer review, apostprintis an article which has been peer reviewed in preparation for publication in a journal. Both the preprint and postprint may differ from the final published version of an article. Preprints and postprints together are referred to as e-prints oreprints.[17]

The wordreprintrefers to hard copies of papers that have already been published; reprints can be produced by the journal publisher, but can also be generated from digital versions (for example, from an electronic database of peer-reviewed journals), or from eprintsself-archivedby their authors in their institutional repositories.

Tenure and promotion

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In academia, preprints are not likely to be weighed heavily when a scholar is evaluated for tenure or promotion, unless the preprint becomes the basis for a peer-reviewed publication.[18]

Some important results in mathematics have been published only on the preprint serverarXiv.[19][20]After nearly a century of effort by mathematicians,Grigori Perelmanpublished a series of preprint papers on thearXivbetween 2002 and 2003, in which he presented a proof of thePoincaré conjecture.[21][22][23]He was offered both the $1 millionMillennium Prizeand theFields Medalfor the result, but he declined both prizes.[19]

Advantages of preprints

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The advantages of preprints can be summarized as: prompt dissemination of outcomes, contributes to free flow of information, increase chances of early feedback and comments, increase number of citations, chances of academic collaborations, make authors enthusiastic, may reducepredatory publishing,increases transparency, may publish negative outcomes and controversies, may receiveDOI,link toORCID,plagiarismcheck, chance to receivegrantsand awards, promotion of young researchers, early credit, good place forhypothesis,and early detection of science misconduct.[12]

Disadvantages of preprints

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The disadvantages of preprints could be summarized as: lack ofpeer-review,absence of quality (in controversy), concerns about premature data, media coverage not properly presenting the inherent uncertainty of preprints,[24]risk of double citation (by publishing a peer-reviewed article, the preprint may also be cited), lack of ethical and statistical guidelines, lack of respect forCOPEorICMJEguidelines, breach ofintellectual propertyregulations in some countries, possible harm to health in certain cases, information overload, breach ofIngelfinger rule(a strategy conducted to discourage dissemination of research reports before they are published in the journal), rush to post low-quality research.[12]

Types of preprint servers

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See also:List of preprint repositories

The preprint servers can be grouped in three categories: general (accepting practically all preprints, frequently with bias towards some topic, publisher e.g.Authorea), field-specific (e.g.bioRxiv,ChemRxiv) and regional (e.g.AfricArxiv,Arabixiv). Additionally, preprints can be categorised by the owner (private publishing company e.g.PeerJ PrePrints,libraries e.g.EarthArXiv,universities e.g.arXivor independent non-profit organisations e.g.HAL). While many preprint servers appeared, some had been terminated. The canceled servers were operated mainly by profit publishing companies (e.g.Nature Publishing GroupclosedNature PrecedingsorO'Reilly&SAGEclosedPeerJ PrePrints) or were regional (e.g.INArxivlimited to Indonesia). Moreover, multiple writing platforms (e.g.Authorea) developed separate preprint servers as a part of their service. For more complete list (over 60 preprints servers) see:List of preprint repositories.

See also

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References

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  1. ^Cobb, Matthew (16 November 2017)."The prehistory of biology preprints: A forgotten experiment from the 1960s".PLOS Biology.15(11): e2003995.doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2003995.PMC5690419.PMID29145518.
  2. ^"The MRC supports preprints".mrc.ac.uk.Medical Research Council. 2017-01-03.Retrieved2018-09-06.
  3. ^"We now accept preprints in grant applications".wellcome.ac.uk.Wellcome. 10 January 2017.Retrieved2017-01-10.
  4. ^Callaway, Ewen (2017-02-16)."Heavyweight funders back central site for life-sciences preprints".Nature.542(7641): 283–284.Bibcode:2017Natur.542..283C.doi:10.1038/nature.2017.21466.PMID28202994.S2CID4466963.
  5. ^"Principles for establishing a Central Service for Preprints: a statement from a consortium of funders | ASAPbio".asapbio.org.13 February 2017.Retrieved2017-02-13.
  6. ^"ASAPbio newsletter vol 7 – Funders sign onto principles for preprint development, RFA released, scientific society town hall | ASAPbio".asapbio.org.14 February 2017.Retrieved2017-02-14.
  7. ^"SciELO Preprints on the way".SciELO in Perspective.2017-02-22.Retrieved2017-02-22.
  8. ^"NOT-OD-17-050: Reporting Preprints and Other Interim Research Products".grants.nih.gov.Retrieved2017-03-25.
  9. ^"NIH enables investigators to include draft preprints in grant proposals".Science | AAAS.2017-03-24.Retrieved2017-03-27.
  10. ^"Public Goods Infrastructure for Preprints and Innovation in Scholarly Communication".cos.io.Retrieved2017-04-19.
  11. ^Dhakal, Kerry (15 April 2019)."Unpaywall".Journal of the Medical Library Association.107(2): 286–288.doi:10.5195/jmla.2019.650.PMC6466485.
  12. ^abcHeidary, Fatemeh; Gharebaghi, Reza (2021-05-31)."COVID-19 impact on research and publication ethics".Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation in Ophthalmology.10(1): 1–4.doi:10.51329/mehdiophthal1414.ISSN2322-3219.PMC10460218.PMID37641621.
  13. ^Brainard, Jeffrey (15 September 2021) [Originally published 8 September 2021]."No revolution: COVID-19 boosted open access, but preprints are only a fraction of pandemic papers".Science.doi:10.1126/science.acx9058.
  14. ^"Breaking Down Pros and Cons of Preprints in Biomedicine".Absolutely Maybe.2016-05-01.Retrieved2018-01-12.
  15. ^"Taking the online medicine".The Economist.ISSN0013-0613.Retrieved2016-03-23.
  16. ^"Comparing journal-independent review services".asapbio.org.ASAPbio. 24 July 2020.Retrieved2021-01-22.
  17. ^"Self-archiving FAQ".EPrints.
  18. ^Callaway, Ewen; Powell, Kendall (2016-02-18)."Biologists urged to hug a preprint".Nature.530(7590): 265.Bibcode:2016Natur.530..265C.doi:10.1038/530265a.PMID26887471.
  19. ^abKaufman, Marc (July 2, 2010),"Russian mathematician wins $1 million prize, but he appears to be happy with $0",Washington Post
  20. ^Nadejda Lobastova and Michael Hirst,"Maths genius living in poverty",Sydney Morning Herald, August 21, 2006
  21. ^Perelman, Grisha (November 11, 2002). "The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications".arXiv:math.DG/0211159.
  22. ^Perelman, Grisha (10 March 2003). "Ricci flow with surgery on three-manifolds".arXiv:math.DG/0303109.
  23. ^Perelman, Grisha (July 17, 2003). "Finite extinction time for the solutions to the Ricci flow on certain three-manifolds".arXiv:math.DG/0307245.
  24. ^Besançon, Lonni; Peiffer-Smadja, Nathan; Segalas, Corentin; Jiang, Haiting; Masuzzo, Paola; Smout, Cooper; Billy, Eric; Deforet, Maxime; Leyrat, Clémence (2020)."Open Science Saves Lives: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic".BMC Medical Research Methodology.21(1): 117.doi:10.1186/s12874-021-01304-y.PMC8179078.PMID34090351.
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