In academic publishing, a preprint is the version of a scientific paper that often is seen prior to its publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The preprint is usually available at no cost to the reader before and/or after the paper is published. As is the case with most preprint services, an author has a venue to post his or her findings ahead of the formal peer-review and publication process. There are also other benefits for the author when a decision is made to upload the manuscript to a preprint server. Among them – this action can help reduce the research publication time frame, speed up the process in disseminating the findings, and establish early provenance of the research.
Last year, I published a post about preprints (04/28/17) and listed a variety of sources that would be of interest to the MSK research community. Recently, there was a news release (03/20/18) from the American Chemical Society (ACS) announcing its partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry and the German Chemical Society, adding to the list of preprint sources. These three societies have come together to support the strategic development and associated costs for the global premier preprint server – ChemRxiv.
This year, we have the pleasure of collaborating with members of our PostDoc community to host an event focusing on preprints at one of the MSK Library’s Advancing Scholarship Discussion Series sessions. Working with Michiel Boekhout, PhD, and his colleagues (Lilian T. Lamech & Zheng Ser), our goal is to bring awareness about the value and benefits of preprints. Michiel, along with Lilian and Zheng are eLife Ambassadors, and one of the causes that eLife Ambassadors hope to champion is preprints and encouraging researchers to start posting their research findings as preprints (when appropriate). You can read more about how eLife offers authors the opportunity to submit a preprint to bioRxiv.
Our upcoming event is scheduled for the end of June 2018. Don’t hesitate to contact Michiel Boekhout (boekhoum@mskcc.org) or me to learn more. You can also start exploring the value of preprints by reading the following editorial published in PLoS Biology (May 2017) entitled, “Ten simple rules to consider regarding preprint submission.”
Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services