{"id":2411,"date":"2016-11-22T09:42:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T11:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2016-11-22T11:45:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T13:45:17","slug":"whats-the-deal-with-preprints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2016\/11\/22\/whats-the-deal-with-preprints\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the deal with preprints?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ernesto Spinak<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Image:<\/a>

Image: SciELO<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week I watched an over an hour webinar that explained the advantages of using preprints servers in scholarly communication. You can watch the presentation on YouTube1<\/sup>. However, If you cannot dedicate so much time, in this post we tell you about the topic in less than 10 minutes. Keep reading.<\/p>\n

In scholarly publication, a preprint is a version of a manuscript prior to peer review that certifies or not its formal publication in a journal. The preprint is deposited by the corresponding author on a preprint server, usually thematic, following public procedures. The preprint version may be an advanced or an incomplete version, but mostly it is a final version. When using this service, authors establish a date as a precedent, may request comments and add suggestions to the manuscript that is subsequently sent to a journal\u2019s formal editorial process.<\/p>\n

Physics and Mathematics researchers have already been depositing their research papers for more than 25 years on arXiv.org where over 100,000 manuscripts per year are uploaded and new areas and disciplines have been added to the repository, such as Quantitative Biology, Statistics and Quantitative Finance. Lately, new preprint servers are in operation in other areas or are in the process of being launched. The ASAPbio initiative, led by scientists, is actively promoting the use of preprints in Biology. Among others, we highlight, in alphabetical order, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, engrXiv, Figshare, F1000Research, PeerJPreprints, PsyArXiv, SocArXiv and SSRN. The important thing is that all these preprints are fully indexed by Google Scholar, which provides them with immediate visibility among the research community. The Open Science Framework website also indexes all main preprints servers.<\/p>\n

Preprints servers are fully compatible with academic journals and, in fact, there is a large number of scientific societies, as well as journals (commercial and open access ones) that incorporate in their editorial policies the use of preprints servers by the author. At Wikipedia there is an article2<\/sup> especially dedicated to the subject, where these institutions and their policies are listed, among them, the Nature Group, Elsevier, Springer, Cell, Science and many others. The ASAPbio website publishes a 4-minute animation that summarizes what are preprints.<\/p>\n