Preprints have been established as an initial step in research communication after 50 years of its conception at the US NIH and the beginning of operation of the arXiv server. It is an enrichment of the classic scholarly communication model in which unpublished manuscripts are submitted to journals for peer review. Journals have, among others, the critical role of validating research. Preprints are made available before this validation step as a means of accelerating the communication of research results and improving manuscripts before sending them to a journal for validation. The use of preprints is identified as one of open science practices. … Read More →
The journal Educação em Revista is reviewing only preprints in the “publish, then review” model
The journal Educação em Revista advances its alignment with Open Science by adopting the “publish, then review” model of publishing by only accepting to evaluate manuscripts already moderated and made available in SciELO Preprints. In an interview to the blog SciELO in Perspective, the journal’s editors talked about the innovation. … Read More →
What are preprints? [Originally published in DADOS’ blog in May/2021]
The traditional double-blind assessment model of scientific articles has been challenged in the last two decades by the so-called “preprint servers”. However, there are still many concerns in the Social Sciences about what preprints are and what changes they bring to the traditional framework of scientific assessment and publication. In this mini class, we seek to answer these questions from the experience of the journal DADOS. … Read More →
It takes a global village or a recap of NISO Plus 2021
The second NISO Plus Conference was held virtually on February 22-25. This year’s theme was “Global conversations – global connections” with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), accessibility, and the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic being transversal topics throughout the conference. This post recaps (mainly) the discussions around these topics and how they relate to our community’s current challenges. … Read More →
Are preprints a problem? 5 ways to improve the quality and credibility of preprints [Originally published in the LSE Impact blog in September/2020]
Preprints are research reports have that have not yet been peer reviewed and accepted for publication. They have increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, high profile discredited studies have led to concerns that speed has been prioritized over the quality and credibility of evidence. Joeri Tijdink, Mario Malicki, Lex Bouter and Gowri Gopalakrishna argue that all stakeholders of the science system have a responsibility in improving the quality and credibility of pre-prints. They outline 5 steps by which this can be achieved. … Read More →
Covering biomedical research preprints amid the coronavirus: 6 things to know [Originally published in Journalist’s Resource in April/2020]
Journalists need to know these six things to cover coronavirus-related preprints, research papers that haven’t been peer reviewed by experts. … Read More →
SciELO Preprints begins operations
The SciELO Program has launched the SciELO Preprints server – https://preprints.scielo.org – with the aim of accelerating the availability of research articles and other scientific communications before, or in parallel with, their evaluation and validation by scientific journals through the peer review process. Although open to all thematic areas, SciELO Preprints will focus on immediately serving communications related to COVID-19. … Read More →
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak highlights serious deficiencies in scholarly communication [Originally published in the LSE Impact blog in March/2020]
As research and government responses to the COVID-19 outbreak escalate in the face of a global public health crisis, Vincent Larivière, Fei Shu and Cassidy R. Sugimoto reflect on efforts to make research on this subject more widely available. Arguing that a narrow focus on research published in high ranking journals predominantly in English has impeded research efforts, they suggest that the renewed emphasis on carrying out open research on the virus presents an opportunity to reassess how research and scholarly communication systems serve the public good. … Read More →
The Road to Preprints (Part 2): SciELO’s Preprint Server [Originally published in the PKP website in March/2020]
Our preprints story continues with a guest post by SciELO. In addition to seed funding to make Open Preprint Systems (OPS) possible, SciELO is working closely with the PKP team to make sure that the software is developed and maintained following state-of-the-art best practices and that its features satisfy the needs of a diverse community. … Read More →
The Road to Preprints (Part 1): Introducing Open Preprint Systems [Originally published in the PKP website in February/2020]
Our story begins in February 2017 when SciELO first announced their quest for a preprint server. Like many circa 2016, SciELO was coming around to the idea that preprints could and would serve an important part in their strategy for open science. But despite a clear vision and path to get there, SciELO was missing an important piece: infrastructure. … Read More →
Posting preprints before peer review is associated with increased visibility and citation of published articles
The communication of research results through preprints has been increasing significantly, as by the increasing number of manuscripts deposited on bioRxiv, the preprint server for biology and life sciences. However, only a small fraction of the research papers indexed in PubMed started as preprints in bioRxiv. But what would undecided authors about preprints say if they knew that articles that have associated preprints have a 49% higher Altmetric index and 36% more citations? This is what shows a recent study published in eLife. … Read More →
Tropical Medicine/Infectious and Parasitic Diseases journals align with open science editorial practices
Three of the most important journals in the areas of Tropical Medicine/Infectious and Parasitic Diseases of the SciELO Brazil Collection decided to adopt open science practices to provide more transparency, increase sharing and open access to the research results they report. This is the first of a series of novel pilot projects promoted by SciELO to inform editorial policies as well as to enable the management and operation of journals in the appropriation of and interoperability with preprints, research data and other content underlying the article texts for subsequent progressive opening of the peer review process. … Read More →
Accelerating scholarly communication via preprints
There are more than 60 preprint servers worldwide. It seems to be a trend, but the model still has problems and unresolved issues, both in terms of digital preservation and financing and collaboration of its technological solutions. It would be important for funding agencies to find out how to support these proposals. … Read More →
Open Science and the new research communication modus operandi – Part II
The adopting process of open science modus operandi involves all phases, actors, and political and institutional research instances. In research projects, openness is organized and pervasive throughout the entire research cycle. This post provides an overview of the openness process, content, and research outcomes in light of the SciELO Program’s priority lines of action. It is divided into two parts. See Part I here. … Read More →
Open Science and the new research communication modus operandi – Part I
The adopting process of open science modus operandi involves all phases, actors, and political and institutional research instances. In research projects, openness is organized and pervasive throughout the entire research cycle. This post provides an overview of the openness process, content, and research outcomes in light of the SciELO Program’s priority lines of action. It is divided into two parts. See Part II here. … Read More →
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