Preprint archives can be useful for discovering the most recent research in a scientific field. These archives can serve to supplement traditional searching in major databases and citation indices as they provide a glimpse into research on the cutting edge before it gets published in a scholarly journal. Hence the name “preprint.”

One of the more popular preprint archives comes from Cornell University Library, called arXiv.org. This service allows preprint submissions in the areas of Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, and Statistics. Running a search (upper righthand corner) for “breast cancer” AND imaging retrieves four preprint papers, one of which is the following: Assessment of algorithms for mitosis detection in breast cancer histopathology images. Notice the link to a PDF of the preprint (on the right hand side), as well as a link to the DOI pointing to the fully published paper in the journal Medical Image Analysis. If a preprint in arXiv is eventually published in a journal, the DOI is added to the record, linking the two together. The Submission History section at the bottom of the page gives dates of submission to arXiv, so older submission dates will most likely have a DOI included in the record as the research will have been published in a scholarly journal.

Another preprint archive service comes from the Open Science Framework (OSF) called OSF Preprints. A search in this archive includes results from three other content-focused preprint archives: PsyArXiv (for psychological sciences), SocArXiv (for social sciences), and engrXiv (for engineering sciences). Like arXiv, PDF downloads of preprints and DOI links are available in OSF Preprints – see this title for an example of a record in OSF preprints: Badges to Acknowledge Open Practices: A Simple, Low-Cost, Effective Method for Increasing Transparency.

For questions or assistance with searching preprint archives, please ask us!