Article Processing Charges (APCs) – although they face criticism – do have advantages over subscriptions. They make immediate open access possible, but they also allow other drawbacks of subscriptions to be avoided, such as fixed page budgets. What APCs have not been able to do, is lower the financial burden of science communication on the research community, as many open access advocates had wanted and expected. A solution may be found – even if only a partial one – in the provision of preprints as a matter of course. … Read More →
The (pre) history of biology preprints
Some terms used currently with certain familiarity give us the false impression of having been coined in the light of the latest technology and inextricably linked to the Internet. Preprints repository is one such example. It seems impossible to devise a way of storing preliminary versions of scientific papers in a non-virtual space, let alone sharing them with as many stakeholders as possible otherwise than electronically. For that is exactly what happened in the unlikely year of 1961, when the NIH began circulating printed biology preprints to a list of subscribers in an experiment called the Information Exchange Groups. … Read More →
Towards open science, Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz welcome submission of preprint manuscripts
Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz is now accepting submission of manuscripts that are in preprint format. This decision follows the recent initiative by SciELO in launching a preprint service and it is aligned to the global movement of open science. This new modality of dissemination of scientific research results will break paradigms and certainly change the way science is measured today. It represents a small step for editors, but a huge leap in scientific communication for society. … Read More →
The Center for Open Science, alternative to Elsevier, announces new preprint services [Originally published in Ithaka S+R blog in August/2017]
As commercial providers buy and build their way into the institutional repository and preprint marketplace, the not-for-profit Center for Open Science (COS) is offering an alternative by expanding what it calls the preprint services it powers through its platform. … Read More →
What will peer review be like in 2030?
Although the scientific literature has always been reviewed before it was published, current forms of peer review are only a few decades old and from the outset have been subjected to criticism and limitations. Open review and preprints servers have emerged in recent years as possible solutions in a world of growing communication in scientific research. Open reviews, artificial intelligence, collaborative and “cloud” reviews… what will peer review be like in 2030? … Read More →
SciELO Preprints on the way
The main objective of SciELO Preprints is to speeding up the availability of research results and will contribute to an organized flow of potentially acceptable preprints by SciELO journals, in line with the advances and growing importance of preprints publication internationally. The cooperative construction of the SciELO Preprints modus operandi will encompass the promotion and debate of the preprints concept, the definition of governance and operations structures and the operational implementation. It is expected to be fully operational by mid-2018. … Read More →
Preprints – the way forward for rapid and open knowledge sharing
Preprints – versions of academic articles that have not yet been formally peer-reviewed before publication – are gaining acceptance in the academic world. They deliver open access as well as speedy publication, and their decades old success in physics has spurred on their spread in other disciplines. The development of preprints is accelerating; important funding agencies are in support of them, and also SciELO is planning to set up a preprint server for authors in Latin America and the Global South generally. … Read More →
Open Access article processing charges: a new serial publication crisis?
The financial and ethical implications that emerge from open access publishing through article processing fees in India are analyzed in a study that proposes the creation of a national open access journal platform such as SciELO in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and facilitate the sharing of metadata among repositories. … Read More →
What’s the deal with preprints?
Preprints enable scholarly communication more quickly, complement traditional publication in academic journals and determine priorities. This procedure may change the peer review system and focus on the role of academic journals. … Read More →
Is the reproducibility crisis exacerbated by pre-publication peer review?
A lack of scrutiny of articles published in peer-reviewed journals on the basis of a belief that pre-publication peer-review provides sufficient scrutiny, may well add to the relatively high number of articles in which results are presented that cannot be replicated. … Read More →
From the NY Times: Biologists went rogue and publish directly on the Internet
The ASAP Bio conference held in February at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, US, brought together biomedicine researchers to discuss new ways to communicate research results using preprints and post-publication peer review. Renowned scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners started to deposit their articles in open access preprint repositories before proceeding with the formal publication in journals. The topic received last week the attention of the New York Times. … Read More →
Coupling Pre-Prints and Post-Publication Peer Review for Fast, Cheap, Fair, and Effective Science Publishing [Originally published in Michael Eisen’s blog “it is not junk”]
Leslie Vosshall and Michael Eisen have written the following white paper as a prelude to the upcoming ASAP Bio meeting in February aimed at promoting pre-print use in biomedicine. We would greatly value any comments, questions or concerns you have about the piece or what we are proposing. … Read More →
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