Lately I have been thinking about the value of preprints and their potential role in the journal manuscript submission process. With this in mind, I was delighted when an email popped into my inbox alerting me to a post from The Scholarly Kitchen entitled “The Stars Are Aligning for Preprints” (Apr 18, 2017). In her post, author Judy Luther, provides an overview of the preprint landscape and discusses the significance that these research papers could play in the scholarly communication arena. Preprints are the authors’ original manuscripts before they submit them for publication. They can:

• help reduce the research to publication time frame, speeding up the process of disseminating one’s science;
• provide an opportunity for feedback and discussion prior to publication;
• and establish early provenance of the research.

There exist several preprint servers, each represented by an individual silo for the very latest research findings. As more content is ingested, I have to wonder — Wouldn’t there be a benefit in linking the servers?  If there was a single search engine, researchers and information professionals would be better able to explore the preprint universe, reducing the time required to identify content of interest.  This would certainly add value to these servers (with overlapping subject areas).

For now, however, I thought I would include a list of preprint servers that reflect the research activities of Memorial Sloan Kettering.

arXiv.org – oldest of the science preprint servers and includes quantitative biology

bioRxiv – for the biological sciences launched in November 2013

figshare – a place to store any kind of research output including data, figures, slides, and preprints

PeerJ Preprint Archives  – focused on biology, medicine, and computer science.  PeerJ also publishes an open access journal but there is no requirement that if a preprint is posted, it also needs to be submit to the journal

preprints  – covers a broad range of subject areas including behavioral sciences, biology, chemistry, and engineering

PsyArXiv Preprints  – hosts three major subject areas: engineering (e.g. biomedical engineering and bioengineering), life sciences (e.g. genetics and genomics), and social and behavioral sciences (e.g. psychology)

As Judy Luther concludes in her post, the role of preprints is clearly evolving and although the stars are aligning, we definitely still need to continue to pose questions and voice our thoughts on how preprints fit into the scholarly publishing life cycle.

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services