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What are Preprints, and How Do They Benefit Authors?

• Research Process

Preprints are research papers shared before peer review. Here we discuss the benefits to authors including rapid credit, visibility & feedback.

Updated on March 29, 2018

Most researchers don't share their work until after it's been published in a journal. Due to lengthy publication times, this can result in delays of months, sometimes years. Authors are understandably frustrated by the amount of time it takes to share their research & reap the benefits of a published, citable research article.

But what if you could put post your manuscript online while it's going through peer review so that your peers and colleagues can see what you're working on? That's the idea behind preprints, and more and more researchers are using them for exactly this purpose.

Definition of a preprint

A preprint is a full draft research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed. Most preprints are given a digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be cited in other research papers.

A preprint is a full draft of a research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed.

Benefits of preprints

Preprints achieve many of the goals of journal publishing, but within a much shorter time frame. The biggest benefits fall into 3 areas: credit , feedback , and visibility .

When you post a preprint with your research results, you can firmly stake a claim to the work you've done. If there is any subsequent discussion of who found a particular result first, you can point to the preprint as a public, conclusive record of your data. Most preprints are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which allows your work to become a permanent part of the scholarly record - one that can be referenced in any dispute over who discovered something first.

For these reasons, the US National Institutes of Health and Wellcome Trust , among other funders, allow researchers to cite preprints in their grant applications.

For a complete list of funder policies see here .

In the traditional system, a submitted manuscript receives feedback from 2 or 3 peer reviewers before publication. With a preprint, other researchers can discover your work sooner, potentially pointing out critical flaws or errors, suggest new studies or data that strengthen your argument or even recommend a collaboration that could lead to publication in a more prestigious journal. The feedback can be provided publicly through commenting, or privately through email. Here is one scientist's story about the benefit of sharing his work as a preprint:

Last year I posted a preprint. Doing this set off a chain of events that convinced me I should post a preprint for ALL my manuscripts.Here's my story (1/17)— Dan Quintana (@dsquintana) February 10, 2018

Here's another author's journey from skepticism to loving preprints. By posting a preprint, this author was able to share their research 10 months earlier & it was viewed over 1,500 times in the first 2 months.

“To all researchers out there, I encourage you to stop worrying and love the preprint. Submit your manuscripts, but also read preprints and make comments.”

Visibility (and citations)

Preprints are not the final form of a research paper for most authors. Thankfully, preprints and infrastructure providers like Crossref link to the final published article whenever possible, meaning that your preprint can serve to bring new readers to your published paper. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association saw notable increases in citations and Altmetric scores when authors had posted their work first as a preprint.

Posting a preprint led to a significant increase in Altmetric attention scores and citations for the final published paper.

The citation effect is small, and more studies will be needed to confirm this finding, but the evidence for more attention in news and social media is strong (nearly a 3-fold increase in Altmetric attention scores). The more places you can be discovered by your peers and the public, the more attention your research is likely to get.

Conclusions

Preprints are a small but rapidly growing piece of scholarly communication. They present several strong advantages to improve the way research is shared - including credit for your work, early feedback & increased visibility - and we hope you will consider giving them a try.

A note to readers: AJE is a division of Research Square Company . Our colleagues built and operate the Research Square preprint platform. For more author resources on preprints we encourage you to browse the content on the Research Square Blog .

This article was updated by our team February 2020 .

Ben Mudrak, PhD

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• v.11(7); 2022 Jul 15

A guide to preprinting for early-career researchers

Cassandra l. ettinger.

1 Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA

Madhumala K. Sadanandappa

2 Department of Molecular and Systems Biology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

Kıvanç Görgülü

3 Comprehensive Cancer Center Munich, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, 81675, Munich, Germany

Karen L. Coghlan

4 George C. Gordon Library, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA

Kenneth K. Hallenbeck

5 TerraPrime, Danvers, MA 01923, USA

Iratxe Puebla

6 ASAPbio, Cambridge, UK

Associated Data

The use of preprints, research manuscripts shared publicly before completing the traditional peer-review process, is becoming a more common practice among life science researchers. Early-career researchers (ECRs) benefit from posting preprints as they are shareable, citable, and prove productivity. However, preprinting a manuscript involves a discussion among all co-authors, and ECRs are often not the decision-makers. Therefore, ECRs may find themselves in situations where they are interested in depositing a preprint but are unsure how to approach their co-authors or advisor about preprinting. Leveraging our own experiences as ECRs, and feedback from the research community, we have constructed a guide for ECRs who are considering preprinting to enable them to take ownership over the process and to raise awareness about preprinting options. We hope that this guide helps ECRs to initiate conversations about preprinting with co-authors and encourage them to preprint their future research.

Summary: Are you an early-career researcher considering preprinting, but unsure how to approach conversations about the possibility? Here, we discuss preprinting and provide tips to enable you to take ownership over the process.

Introduction

Preprints have attracted the attention of life scientists due to their growth in recent years and their role in facilitating the prompt sharing of research findings related to the COVID-19 pandemic ( Fraser et al., 2021 ). Preprints support the rapid dissemination of research, accelerate scientific progress, and directly benefit individual researchers, particularly early-career researchers (ECRs) including undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, research associates, research scientists, junior group leaders, staff scientists, and other researchers. In addition to offering more control over how and when to share research work compared to publication at a journal, preprints enable researchers to present their research contributions to funding agencies and hiring committees while the manuscript is undergoing the editorial process at a journal.

Though ECRs are often interested in open science and preprints ( Sarabipour et al., 2019 ; Wolf et al., 2021 ), many find themselves in situations where the decision on how to publish their research does not lie solely with them. Whether to preprint a manuscript involves a discussion among co-authors, and the ECR's advisor, the group leader, or the corresponding author will often make the final decision. Therefore, ECRs may find themselves in a situation where they would like to preprint but are unsure how to approach their advisor about preprinting. Drawing on our own experiences as ECRs and feedback from the research community, we have constructed the following guide for ECRs interested in preprinting their research. In this guide, we focus on: (1) what preprints are and current trends in the life sciences, (2) how to approach conversations about preprints with co-authors and advisors, (3) common concerns about preprinting, (4) practical steps for depositing preprints, and (5) how to get involved with preprints more broadly. Besides raising awareness, we hope that the resources and suggestions in this article will be informative and helpful to ECRs in understanding the advantages of preprints.

Do your research: what is a preprint?

A preprint is defined as a full draft version of a research manuscript shared publicly prior to the peer-review process ( Tennant et al., 2018 preprint; Mudrack, 2020 ). Posting a preprint serves as a public, permanent disclosure of one's research. In patent terms it would serve as prior art, assigning a date in the scholarly record for any subsequent discussion of who found a particular result first. Preprints are assigned a persistent identifier, most commonly a digital object identifier number (DOI), which allows them to become a permanent part of the scholarly record ( International DOI Foundation, 2021 ). The DOI records metadata for ease of discoverability. Many funders, such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US, the European Research Council, or the Australian Research Council, now allow preprint citations in grant applications or reports ( Kaiser, 2017 ; Watson, 2021 ). The preprint can be cited in subsequent papers furthering the scholarly record and making research results available in a timely manner.

Preprints can enhance the reachability and visibility of research findings, as they are not associated with access barriers ( Fraser et al., 2020 ). Thus, preprints enable open science as the servers are free-to-use and free-to-access, thereby facilitating early discovery and global public engagement ( Maggio et al., 2018 ; UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, 2021 ). Preprints also support an international and equitable scientific community: there is no paywall, which means that researchers can read and cite work they otherwise would not be able to access due to barriers caused by journal subscription fees.

Preprints are not new to the research community. In the 1960s, the NIH created the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs) to circulate copies of biological preprints. The IEGs ended up growing into seven different groups with a membership of more than 3600 participants and distributed over 2500 documents. However, by 1967 the IEGs were abandoned after several journal publishers refused to accept articles circulated as preprints ( Cobb, 2017 ). Physicists experimented with similar models, and in 1991, arXiv was founded as a repository for manuscripts in the physical sciences ( ArXiv, 2021 ). While physicists adopted preprints to disseminate work with colleagues, preprints in the life sciences did not take off until the 2010s, with the start of bioRxiv and initial signs of support by funders and publishers ( Puebla et al., 2022 ).

Preprint servers and landscape

Preprint adoption in the life sciences started with the launch of bioRxiv in November 2013. Currently, over 50 preprint servers cover a wide range of disciplines; for a list of preprint servers relevant to life sciences, biomedical, and clinical research, refer to the ASAPbio webpage ( https://asapbio.org/preprint-servers ; Kirkham et al., 2020 ). While these servers follow different governance models, they are operated by academic communities, academic institutions, or publishers. Similar to journal publications, searching for preprints is straightforward, as Google Scholar and Europe PMC index many preprint servers including bioRxiv, Research Square, and medRxiv. This means that many of the ways that one uses to keep up with published literature (for tips see Pain, 2016 ) can also alert you to the latest preprints.

The number of cumulative submissions to preprint servers over time demonstrates increased acceptance of preprinting among life science researchers ( Tennant et al., 2018 preprint); for the evolution of life science preprints in that time period, see the data indexed by Europe PMC ( Europe PMC, 2021 ). bioRxiv, the largest biology preprint server, had cumulatively published over 200,000 preprints by early 2022 ( Fig. 1 A; bioRxiv reporting, 2021 ). Their sister server medRxiv launched in June 2019 for health sciences, now hosts over 40,000 preprints ( Fig. 1 A). Researchers from over 170 countries have deposited preprints in bioRxiv, with the majority of preprints originating from the USA and the UK ( Fig. 1 B) ( Abdill et al., 2020 ). Previous studies looking at the country distribution of preprints before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, also highlight that the US, China and countries in Western Europe are the most represented in bioRxiv and medRxiv ( Abdill et al., 2020 ; Fraser et al., 2021 ). Disparities in preprint deposition across countries relative to their overall scientific output suggest that geographical barriers may exist to preprint adoption ( Abdill et al., 2020 ).

(A) Monthly new submissions to bioRxiv (orange - November 2013 to December 2021) and medRxiv (grey - June 2019 to December 2021). (B) A heat map showing the country-wise distribution of preprints in both bioRxiv and medRxiv based on the institutional affiliation of the corresponding author. The color coding uses a log scale. (Data curated from bioRxiv and medRxiv- from servers launch untill August 2021).

Consideration of preprint servers based on discipline, scope, policies, and readership is relevant to inform where to deposit your preprint, and in turn to maximize visibility for the work and opportunities for feedback from researchers in your specific field. Data suggests that the adoption of preprints varies from one discipline to another within the life sciences. Neuroscience, microbiology, bioinformatics, cell biology and evolutionary biology are among the fields most extensively represented in bioRxiv ( Abdill and Blekhman, 2019 ; bioRxiv reporting, 2021 ), whereas infectious diseases, epidemiology, and public and global health preprints are strongly represented in medRxiv ( bioRxiv reporting, 2021 ). The strongest disciplines in medRxiv closely overlap with those relevant to COVID-19 research, as many researchers shared their preliminary data related to COVID-19 in the form of preprints to help inform the response to the pandemic. During the initial months of the pandemic there was not only a surge in the deposition of preprints but also in public engagement with preprinted COVID-19-related research. COVID-19 preprints also received more citations, reactions on social media and coverage in the press compared to non-COVID-19 preprints ( Fraser et al., 2021 ).

Engagement with preprints can also vary according to the server and whether it is predominantly linked to a journal's submission process ( Kirkham et al., 2020 ). Researchers seeking to share their work with their communities before or in parallel to journal submission may post to community-operated servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv or servers that serve regional communities such as AfricArxiv, RINarxiv or IndiaRxiv. On the other hand, some researchers post their preprint upon journal submission, by opting into services offered by journals to post at a preprint server their publisher runs or has a partnership with. Examples of this type of service include Cell Sneak Peak and Preprints with the Lancet (owned by Elsevier) offered by journals in the Cell and Lancet families, or journals in the Springer Nature portfolio, which offer authors the option to deposit at Research Square, a server partnered with the publisher.

I am thinking about preprinting my paper - how should I approach it with my advisors and co-authors?

Talking to your advisor, colleagues, and co-authors.

So, after considering all the above, you would like to preprint your paper; how to get started? As a first step, have a conversation with your advisor about preprinting your next paper. If you are unsure about where they stand regarding preprints, you can start by asking about their views on preprinting. If you have these discussions with your advisor or co-authors by email, we have provided some draft email structures to help you ( Fig. 2 ; Text S1 ). Here are a few important things to consider:

Draft email to one ’ s advisor. An email template to help with initiating conversations about preprinting with one's advisor. We have included the same template and a template for emailing co-authors in text format in the supplementary materials ( Text S1 ).

• Keep it simple.
• Familiarize yourself with your institution or funder policy for communicating the work. Do they encourage or require preprints?
• Find out your advisor's priorities for sharing the group's work.
• Provide examples of other researchers in your field who have preprinted.
• Offer additional resources or seek further input about using preprints.

If you are meeting with your advisor in person, even if you come prepared with all the answers, remember that your advisor may have questions that you did not anticipate or may still be unsure of what might be best for the work after your conversation. They may need time to mull over the options and get back to you; not everything needs to be settled in one conversation. You could offer to gather more information on preprinting or their specific concerns to share with them and then continue the conversation at the next meeting. All authors must be on board to preprint the manuscript, so having these meetings early on can leave time for you to address concerns.

In addition, consider the language and construction of the argument that you will use in your preprinting conversations. Try to use ‘I’ language when discussing your goals and motivations and remind all parties how this aligns with your values or will benefit your career. If someone has a different opinion on preprinting than you do, investigate this opinion further by asking them how they reached that conclusion. Come prepared with resources to share and be aware of common concerns (see below and Table 1 ), but do not pressure your advisor or colleagues to decide right away. Be ready to compromise and table the discussion to be followed up with in the future.

Table 1.

Examples of concerns or questions that may come up in conversation with your co-authors about preprints, along with information and considerations to raise in response when making a case for preprinting

Construct your argument - what concerns may come up in conversations about preprints?

Several concerns or issues may come up in conversations with co-authors, colleagues, advisors, or others in the community. These issues might be influenced by research field, career stage, or experience. For example, those working in medical fields may raise concerns about sharing findings that may affect patients before peer-review; the stakes in patient treatment and public health are higher than in other fields. Preprint opinion may also differ depending on the level of acceptance of preprints in a discipline. For instance, in research fields with strong preprint adoption, it is less likely to receive the response ‘I did not see your work!’ when you preprint. On the other hand, concerns about visibility or scooping may be more significant for fields with relatively lower adoption or acceptance of preprints.

We outline below ( Table 1 ) some of the concerns or questions that may arise during discussions about preprints. In addition, we explore two of the most common themes in greater detail: scooping and sharing the work before the journal peer-review process.

Concern #1: I'll get scooped

A common concern among researchers is the risk of scooping – that another competing group will see the preprint and rush to publish their results in a journal before the preprint authors can do so themselves, thereby depriving the preprint authors of the career benefits of publishing in their target journal ( Bourne et al., 2017 ). Interestingly, there is no evidence that the prevalence of scooping in preprints is higher than in the context of journal publications. For instance, in the 2019 bioRxiv survey, only 0.7% of respondents indicated that preprinting prevented them from publishing in their journal of choice ( Sever et al., 2019 preprint).

Most remarkably, researchers have used their preprints as an opportunity to initiate collaborations with other groups in the field or to coordinate the publication of their work together, thereby avoiding concerns about priority claims. For example, Dr Josh Hardy discussed how upon seeing a preprint from another group, they got in touch with the preprint authors. The two groups coordinated the journal publication of their respective papers, which ended up appearing in the same journal ( Hardy, 2021 ).

Preprinting allows researchers much more control of when they disseminate their work and is thus an opportunity to prevent being scooped while waiting for the paper to be published in a journal. In addition, preprints provide an avenue for researchers in rapidly moving fields to promptly share their work with their community, where the delay associated with peer review may come at the cost of priority. In the bioRxiv survey, 28% of respondents stated that preprints helped them stake a priority claim in their field ( Sever et al., 2019 , preprint).

Preprints enhance visibility

Visibility is an important element in the context of scooping concerns: preprints must be readily discoverable by researchers in the field, which in turn, allows attributing credit to the authors. Will the preprint be seen by colleagues in the field? Or is there a risk that the preprint may be overlooked, and competitors may not cite it?

In the bioRxiv survey, 74% of respondents stated that preprinting increased awareness of their research ( Sever et al., 2019 , preprint). Preprints are readily searchable online, as indexing services and literature search tools increasingly incorporate them (Scopus, Google Scholar, Europe PMC, and Crossref all index preprints). In addition, authors can quickly disseminate preprints on social media platforms. For example, Twitter plays an important role in increasing the visibility of preprints, with many research groups sharing their latest preprints via Twitter or commenting on colleagues’ latest preprinted work ( Chiarelli et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, social media platforms can allow scientists to immediately measure the community's reactions and engagement with the work by the number of tweets, re-tweets, and likes the preprint receives. Many authors now post Twitter threads highlighting the main findings of their preprints or journal articles. In fact, before writing this guide we used a Twitter thread with polls to gauge ECR interest in preprinting, with 92.5% of respondents recommending preprinting to ECRs ( n =40) ( Fig. S1 , Table S1 ). If you are new to social media, there are several existing guides for scientists that can help you get started ( Bik and Goldstein, 2013 ; Heemstra, 2020 ; Cheplygina et al., 2020 ).

In addition, studies have shown that posting preprints results in more attention on social media and a higher number of citations for the article once it appears in a journal ( Fu and Hughey, 2019 ). Altmetric scores are generally higher for articles deposited as preprints; journal publications that have associated bioRxiv preprints receive more mentions on blogs and Wikipedia than non-deposited articles, as well as more mentions in Twitter or Mendeley ( Abdill and Blekhman, 2019 ; Fraser et al., 2020 ). COVID-19 preprints have also been widely reported in the lay media ( Fleerackers et al., 2022 ). The early accrual of citations for the journal publication suggests that the community had already taken note of the preprint, which gave them a chance to consider the work as part of their own research between the preprint appearance and the journal publication.

Preprints establish priority

An important step in the research process is to disseminate your findings to the scientific community, and in turn, be able to claim credit for the work. Recognition for research productivity is essential to establishing a reputation in the field, acquiring grants, and career progress. A preprint provides a permanent time-stamped record for the research findings in a much shorter timeline than a journal publication. Thus, when time is critical (e.g. when completing your thesis or finishing a project before moving to another position), preprinting can greatly benefit ECRs.

In the coming years, life scientists might use preprints as a channel to establish priority, which has been established practice in the physics community for years ( Vale and Hyman, 2016 ). In support of this idea, several publishers such as EMBO Press, PLOS, and eLife have ‘ scoop protection’ policies that recognize the date of the preprint deposition as the date at which their policy applies. The scooping-protection policy stipulates that from the date of the preprint, if another publication appears reporting similar findings, that would not impact the consideration of the paper submitted to their journals.

Researchers often worry about the potential risk of scooping when they present their preliminary findings at conferences or symposiums. Attendees could use the information they heard at the conference and scoop the presenter. As the information would have been available only to the conference attendees, there is limited audience to vouch for who has priority over that work and it would not be easy to establish who did what and when. Depositing a preprint before the conference presentation records the priority claim with a time-stamp and provides protection from scooping.

Preprints are citable

A tangible benefit of preprints is that they are citable and can prove productivity for prospective funders. Many funding agencies now have policies that allow citing preprints as part of grant applications and reports (more information on funder policies at asapbio.org/funder-policies). We expect to see more funding agencies update their policies, recognizing the importance of preprints in the future. Besides funders, several research institutions have started to include preprints in their processes for hiring and promotion (see asapbio.org/university-policies).

Concern #2: My work hasn't been peer reviewed yet

Another common concern that may arise in conversations around preprints is sharing work before peer review. Some researchers worry about disseminating their findings before completing the traditional peer-review process, which provides feedback on the work and can also address any errors before the broader circulation of the manuscript. It is important to note that the preprint should be carefully prepared before depositing it to the server, similar to journal manuscript preparation. To this end, ensure that all co-authors check the paper before posting and consider receiving feedback from colleagues prior to submitting the paper to the preprint server.

Preprint feedback focuses on the science and not on journal fit

An advantage of posting a preprint is that feedback received from the scientific community can help to improve the manuscript and is independent of subjective evaluations about journal fit. Incorporating community feedback into the manuscript can even increase the chances of eventual publication. A preprint brings more eyes and a broader range of perspectives to the paper than the traditional two or three reviewers from the journal's peer-review. Thus, it can provide a robust mechanism to identify any issues before a manuscript enters the journal's editorial process and valuable input on specific aspects including the statistical analyses, methodology, or the interpretations of the data. Importantly, preprint servers allow authors to submit new versions of the preprint. It is straightforward for authors to post a revision as a new preprint version after incorporating additional work or correcting any oversights. The mechanisms for preprint versioning allow updates or corrections to the paper in a faster and simpler path compared to corrections to the article's version of record at a journal.

Preprints enable journal-independent peer-review

Several platforms offer feedback and evaluations on preprints, and in some of these the peer-review process runs similarly to the traditional journal peer review. For example, Review Commons, an initiative by EMBO Press and ASAPbio, allows researchers to submit their preprint for peer review prior to journal submission. Review Commons has partnered with 17 affiliate journals — the Company of Biologists’s journals, EMBO Press journals, PLOS, eLife , Journal of Cell Biology , and Molecular Biology of the Cell — that have agreed to use the reviews provided by Review Commons to inform their evaluation and editorial decision, thus avoiding multiple review rounds. Review Commons requires the authors to post a preprint before submitting the manuscript to an affiliate journal.

Services such as Review Commons and Peer Community In - which also completes evaluation of preprints - involve the review of preprints in a process coordinated by an editor or similar role. On the other hand, other platforms, such as PREreview and PubPeer, allow any community member to provide feedback on the preprint ( Table 2 ). In addition, many preprint servers offer commenting features that allow readers to contribute comments on preprints in a variety of formats; such comments may involve praise for the work, queries to the authors, comments on specific aspects of the study, summaries from journal club discussions or even copies of full reviews for the preprint ( Malički et al., 2021 ).

Table 2.

Preprint commentary and review platforms and their characteristics. Information for the different platforms is based on the records available at ReImagine Review.

Public comments posted on the preprint can also help inform and positively shape the editor's decision upon manuscript submission to a journal. Some journals such as Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Open Biology have appointed preprint editors who check the latest preprints to solicit submissions to their journals ( Neiman et al., 2021 ).

Preprints generally change little upon journal publication

A majority of the manuscripts posted as preprints go on to be published in a journal; a study of bioRxiv preprints found that two thirds of the preprints appeared at a journal within 2 years ( Abdill and Blekhman , 2019 ). Additional studies that have evaluated the content of preprints and their associated journal publications found that the reporting quality in preprints is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles ( Carneiro et al., 2020 ) and that the main content and conclusions changed little between the preprint and the journal publication for the same work ( Brierley et al., 2022 ; Nicholson et al., 2022 ; Zeraatkar et al., 2022 ). These studies suggest that there is no evidence to consider research findings reported via preprints as less trustworthy than journal publications. The peer-review process at journals provides a valuable mechanism to scrutinize research work and identify potential flaws or oversights, but it is important to remember that peer review is not infallible ( Schroter et al., 2008 ), and the ‘peer reviewed’ label does not imply that a particular published finding is reliable; all research works should be critically appraised, whether they appear at a journal, at a preprint server or in another format.

Next steps - how to preprint your paper?

Once you have your co-authors’ green light to preprint the work, here are a few actionable steps to complete the preprint deposition ( Fig. 3 ).

Preprint submission checklist. A suggested checklist to help with preprint submission after having a successful conversation and the green light from advisors and co-authors to preprint.

Preprint server

First, you need to choose a preprint server for your manuscript. Think carefully about your audience and what server will best reach the targeted audience (see above). If you plan to submit the manuscript to a journal, familiarize yourself with the journal's editorial policies about preprints. Check if the journal specifies any preprint servers they accept for preprint deposition, for example, some journals have policies only allowing preprints to be deposited on non-profit servers (e.g. bioRxiv, AfricaArXiv ).

Preprint license

It is also important to think about the license you will apply to the preprint. You have several options - from retaining all rights (i.e. meaning you do not give default permission to reuse the work) to a range of Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which standardize permissions for the type of use allowed for the work (asapbio.org/licensing-faq). A CC BY license allows any type of re-use without requiring permission from the author, providing credit is given to the original author(s). This type of credit is called attribution ( AboutCCLicenses, n.d. ). The CC BY license is the most common type and its designation has been shown to increase citation and visibility of monographs ( Snijder, 2015 ). There are additional license options that can be used to preserve copyright, the more licenses options chosen increases the restrictions on reuse: CC BY-NC (cannot be used for commercial purposes), CC BY-ND (non-derivative, must be shared in its original form) and CC BY-SA (share-alike, if re-used must be published under the same or a more restrictive license). These license options (BY, NC, ND, and SA) can be chosen in combination to retain rights and further specify reuse restrictions (e.g. CC BY-NC-SA, etc). While some preprint servers offer a range of license options (e.g. bioRxiv, medRxiv, OSF Preprints), others require a CC-BY license (e.g. Research Square, preprints.org, SciELO Preprints).

Preprint preparation

In general, preprint servers are format agnostic, meaning they accept a single file of your manuscript in any format (for example, a single PDF file in the formatting style of the journal of your choice!) and then authorship information. You can link the preprint-related data and additional resources deposited in public repositories to your preprint. This may be important if your target journal has an open-data policy (e.g. ASM journals, BMC-series journals) which requires all data and code to be publicly available.

Preprint submission

Now that you've chosen a preprint server, license type, and prepared your manuscript, decide who will submit the manuscript and when it will be submitted. In the bioRxiv survey, authors preferred preprinting either before journal submission (42%) or concurrent to journal submission (37%) ( Sever et al., 2019 preprint). Some journals work with preprint servers, like bioRxiv, to also allow for direct submission of your manuscript to a journal after posting to the preprint server. After the preprint submission, don't forget to share your new preprint on social media ( Heemstra, 2020 ; Cheplygina et al., 2020 )!

If your co-authors aren't interested in preprinting this time...

Irrespective of the field, many researchers are still wary of preprinting, and it is understandable that other authors may have concerns or may need additional time to consider your request. Almost half of the respondents in our Twitter survey who were unable to convince their co-authors to preprint, indicated that their co-authors might be open to preprinting in the future. Offer to continue the conversation another time and suggest to them that it's worth keeping an eye on the latest preprints coming out in your field. You may also suggest you revisit the option of preprinting for another paper where they may view the stakes as less high. If your co-authors are still uninterested, there are still many other ways to get involved with preprints even if you are unable to preprint your current work.

Other ways to get involved with preprints

Beyond providing an opportunity to promptly share your work and get credit for it, preprints also offer other benefits to your scientific career. For example, several communities with an interest in open science also support preprints. Getting involved with one or more of those groups can be a way to expand your professional network and connect with other researchers in your discipline.

ASAPbio has an international community of researchers and others in the science communication space, who drive initiatives to support preprints and interact and support each other. ASAPbio also runs a fellows program allowing participants to learn more about preprints and develop skills to drive discussions about the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. eLife coordinates an ambassadors program, which aims to bring together ECRs interested in promoting change in academic culture and science communication. preLights, an initiative of the Company of Biologists, provides a platform for ECRs to highlight preprints they find of interest and is another way to engage with preprints.

If you are interested in developing your review skills, several options are currently available. Preprint journal clubs are an excellent opportunity to keep up to date with the latest research in your field and connect with others. If you are part of a local journal club, you can suggest incorporating preprints, if they are not already covered. If you do not have a local journal club, you can explore online options, e.g. PREreview coordinates live-streamed preprint journal clubs.

We hope that this informational guide will be useful for readers, especially ECRs, interested in preprinting their research. In addition to exploring the current landscape of preprints in the life sciences, we have discussed common concerns around preprints that might come up in conversations with colleagues. The tips provided in this article are useful for having conversations with advisors and co-authors about preprinting, including email templates and practical steps needed to preprint your work.

In this piece, we may have missed many tips and suggestions, but as preprints continue to grow, so will our collective expertise as well as the evidence around the use of preprints for science communication. We are excited to watch the preprinting community continue to grow and look forward to seeing more preprint engagement from ECRs in the coming years.

Supplementary Material

Acknowledgements.

We thank ASAPbio for hosting the ASAPbio Fellows program and we are appreciative of the support received from the 2021 cohort of ASAPbio Fellows. We further thank bioRxiv and medRxiv for providing data on the country distribution of preprints at their servers. We are also grateful to Jessica Polka (ORCID: 0000-0001-6610-9293) and Samantha Hindle (ORCID: 0000-0002-3708-3546) for helpful suggestions on this manuscript. KG is supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (Project no: 492436553).

Competing interests

IP is an employee of ASAPbio, a non-profit organization promoting the productive use of preprints.

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Open Access Publishing

• Common Open Access Myths
• Supporting Open Access

What are Preprints?

A preprint is an early version of an academic article that has been made available by the author for others to read for free online before it has been peer reviewed or published in an academic journal.

What are the Benefits of Preprints?

Publishing an article as a preprint serves several important purposes:

• It allows the information contained in the article to be shared with the academic community more rapidly and openly than traditional publication. The formal journal publication process is often lengthy, and it can take many months for an article to be reviewed and published.
• Research has shown that publishing a journal article as a preprint can  increase citations  to the final peer reviewed article.
• By posting a freely accessible version of an article online, the author has the opportunity to receive comments and reviews by readers that might lead to changes and improvements in the final published draft.
• It can be used by researchers to provide evidence of productivity when applying for jobs or submitting grant proposals, and it can also generally help to establish priority of discovery and ideas.
• Posting an article as a preprint can also particularly  benefit early career researchers  by helping then to find research collaborators, and helping to improving their professional network, which can lead to more opportunities for these researchers.

Things to Keep in Mind About Preprints

• Preprints have not been peer reviewed : While preprints are scholarly articles, they have not yet been formally peer reviewed. Some preprint servers may do a rudimentary check to ensure that submitted content is legitimate scientific/academic research, but they are not checking the reliability and accuracy of information in the article. It is important that those reading and using preprints keep this in mind.
• Some journals might not accept article submissions that were published as preprints: While an increasing number of publishers and journals welcome the submissions of articles that have been released as a preprint, some journals might not accept them. It is important to check the policies of any journal you may wish to submit to before releasing a preprint. The Sherpa Romeo database can be used to learn if publishers and journal support preprinting, and the  Transpose  database provides even more details about journal policies toward preprints. 

Selected Preprint Servers

Below are a few selected preprint servers of relevance to the Longwood community. A comprehensive list of preprint servers (and one that compares server policies) can be found on the ASAPbio website .

Discipline-Specific

• bioRxiv : biology and life sciences (informative  article about bioRxiv , including statistics and a history of the preprint server)
• medRxiv : health sciences/clinical research
• arXiv : physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics ​
• NutriXiv : nutritional sciences (note: NutriXiv is no longer accepting new submissions) ​

Multidisciplinary

• Google Scholar : Indexes preprints from many popular servers, including some of the ones mentioned here.
• OSF Preprints : Supported by the Center for Open Science, OSF is a free and open platform that supports a variety of discipline-specific preprint servers. The OSF search aggregator allows users to search through its own preprint collections and those of other organizations.
• Preprints.org : Multidisciplinary preprint server.
• PrePubMed : An independent effort to index preprints from a variety of sources (including ones mentioned above) that fit the profile of articles which would appear in PubMed, once published.

Preprints and the NIH

The National Institutes of Health specifically  supports the use  and citation of preprints as "interim research projects" to "speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor" of an author's work. NIH notice NOT-OD-17-050 discusses the benefits of preprints and provides guidance for authors on selecting a reliable preprint server to post their articles to. This NIH  blog post also offers additional explanation related to this notice. In brief:

• Authors are encouraged by the NIH to include preprints in their "My Bibliography."
• Authors can then associate grant awards with those preprints by logging on through ERA Commons.
• Authors are asked by the NIH to choose a Creative Commons license to release their preprint under, so that it is easily identified as an openly accessible article. Learn more about different CC licenses from ASAPBio .

To learn about other funder's policies towards preprints, you can consult  https://asapbio.org/funder-policies

Common Questions About Preprints

• "These concerns are valid, but there is good reason to believe that they can be mitigated and managed...[with]...attention and inspection from our scientific community....preprints can be screened before posting to block attempts to propagate misinformation. Furthermore, some preprint servers display disclaimers on the top of each article to make clear that preprints are not validated through peer-review." ( ASAPBio )
• Preprint servers should include a "timestamp indicating when the article appeared, which is usually within 24 hours of submission. This date, along with the preprint itself, is made open access... and thus, anyone can determine the order of priority relative to other published work or, indeed, other preprints. While journals provide an important service of validation through peer review, establishment of priority can be significantly delayed because the work is not public during the process of peer review in most journals." ( Ten Simple Rules )
• "As jobs and grants become very competitive, there is increasing worry...about scooping, ie that their ideas/results will be published by others and that they will not receive proper attribution....Our argument is that this is unlikely, and indeed there is likely be to greater protection and overall fairness in establishing credit for work by submitting both to a preprint server (for fair and timely disclosure) and to a journal (for validation by peer review)." ( ASAPBio )
• "Certainly, the peer review process can add significant value to the work, pointing out errors or areas for improvement. Nevertheless, authors must stand behind their submitted preprint, because it is a public disclosure (and hence a citable entity), albeit a non-peer-reviewed one. Even without peer review, their scientific colleagues will be reading and judging the work, and the authors’ reputations are at stake." ( Ten Simple Rules )
• This will help the journal and preprint repositories connect your preprint to the final published article.
• Also, since plagiarism detection software will pick up preprints as a match, the journal will more easily be able to review those reports if they know you have published a preprint. 
• << Previous: Supporting Open Access
• Last Updated: Jun 4, 2024 12:45 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/OA

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10 tips for submitting a successful preprint

How to stand out in the fast-growing throng.

Credit: jayk7/Getty

26 May 2020

jayk7/Getty

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only accelerated the already rapid growth in submissions of preprints in the biological sciences, but has brought them to the public’s attention as never before .

For example, the medical sciences preprint server medRxiv has already posted more than 3,200 preprints related to the disease. In April, it recorded 10 million views from scientists and the general public.

Many authors in the biological and medical sciences are new to the format. Nature Index asked five experts for their advice on preprint etiquette and best practice.

1. Think of a preprint as the ‘directors’ cut’ of a movie

John Inglis

“The right time to post a preprint is when all the authors are happy that it represents their collective view of their work and its interpretation,” says John Inglis, co-founder of the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint archives.

“We sometimes refer to this as the ‘directors’ cut’, knowing that if the manuscript is submitted to a journal, it may undergo all kinds of change – in length or presentation, as well as revisions of the content itself, after the process of peer review.”

Yet many authors post preprints at the same time they submit to a journal. This can be a missed opportunity, argues Jessica Polka, executive director of ASAPbio, a non-profit aiming to accelerate publication in the life sciences.

“Posting a preprint before journal submission will allow you to get additional community feedback that might improve your paper,” she says. “You might even be approached by a journal editor scouting for submissions.”

Michael Hoffman, a computational biologist and volunteer preprint screener for bioRxiv, cautions against posting too hastily.

“What I wouldn't do is post a preprint that I know has flaws in it I intend to fix before sending to a journal,” he says. “Most people are going to read your manuscript a maximum of one time and you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.”

2. Post your preprint to a recognized server

A number of high-profile COVID-19 preprints have been posted on the authors’ lab or project websites rather than a recognized preprint platform. Our panel agreed that this was not best practice.

“Preprints posted to a lab website won't show up in search tools like EuropePMC and Google Scholar,” says Polka. “They also won't have a DOI [Digital Object Identifier] which makes metadata more accessible, and won't be archived with other literature if the site goes down. In general, they will be less visible than preprints posted to a recognized repository.”

Inglis points out that platforms like medRxiv and bioRxiv have features that don't appear on many lab or project websites, including usage statistics, Altmetric badges, links from preprints to journal-published versions of manuscripts, and link-outs to sites where conversation about individual preprints takes place.

And while there’s nothing to stop authors posting to their own website in addition to a preprint server, this also isn’t recommended.

“You want to limit the number of potential authoritative sources and references for the same document, and get all your citations in one place,” says Hoffman.

3. Think about your target audience

Jessica Polka

Preprint authors now have a bewildering array of servers to choose from.

Some, such as arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN and OSF Preprints, are relatively broad in scope. Others focus on particular topics (e.g., PsyArXiv) or geographical regions (e.g., AfricArXiv .

“Authors should consider who their main audience is and choose a server targeting that community,” advises Samantha Hindle, senior content lead at bioRxiv and medRxiv.

Dasapta Erwin Irawan, founder of the Indonesian preprint server INA-Rxiv, suggests that geographically-focused archives may be most appropriate if they represent the target audience.

“It makes sense that if the scope of the preprint is local, then it should go to a national level server, if it’s available,” he says.

4. Check the policies of preprint servers and journals

Servers differ in what types of content they allow. BioRxiv, for example, does not accept review papers or papers that have already been accepted by a journal.

Authors should also check the policies of any journals they wish to submit to, says Polka. For example, some only accept papers that have been submitted as preprints to a non-commercial (non-profit) server.

5. Choose your title and write your abstract responsibly

Samantha Hindle

The attention received by some COVID-19 preprints has highlighted the importance of thinking about how preprints may be interpreted by the general public.

“Media reporting is attracting the attention of a non-scientist audience who may not understand the subtle distinction between a preprint and a peer-reviewed, published journal article,” says Hindle.

“It is important for authors to make responsible decisions when choosing their title, and to make every effort to ensure that the title and abstract accurately conveys the results, without making exaggerated claims that can easily be hyped by the media.”

6. Make sure all your co-authors are happy for you to post the preprint

A common reason for a preprint being withdrawn (the term ‘retraction’ is not used for preprints) is that one or more of the named co-authors have not agreed to its submission.

It’s essential, then, to ensure that all co-authors have given their approval before clicking 'submit'.

Authors will also have a choice of the license they want to apply to their preprint, adds Polka. This too should be discussed with coauthors before submitting.

7. Use social media to promote your preprint

Dasapta Erwin Irawan

One of the main arguments for posting preprints is to get feedback from the scientific community. But this doesn't always happen – authors need to be proactive.

Dasapta recommends targeting several communication channels in parallel including intra-university mailing lists, WhatsApp groups, and social media.

“Twitter is my go-to social media to reach international attention,” he says. “I tend to use Facebook for Indonesian audiences.”

“Science twitter is growing in size, diversity, and volume,” says Inglis. “I can’t see any downsides to authors using it to promote their work, except that they may find they attract some proportion of trolls and haters and have to deal with them in some way.”

“If authors post a preprint and do not receive any feedback, they can request a review on PREreview,” adds Hindle, referring to the preprint review platform that she co-founded .

For preprints related to COVID-19, an Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview can be requested.

8. Engage with criticism

Many preprint archives allow comments, but few researchers currently use this facility. “Most feedback takes place elsewhere,” says Inglis.

“Commentary appears most publicly on Twitter, less frequently on Facebook. The most common form of feedback, authors tell us, comes privately, not publicly – through direct email or personal contact.”

Inglis likens preprint archives to a scientific conference where the latest findings are presented and discussed. But, as with ‘real life’ conferences, authors should expect criticism and engage with it thoughtfully.

“The scientific process is at its best when ideas and results are challenged from multiple perspectives,” says Hindle.

“ Receiving negative feedback is one of those opportunities to step back, look from the other person’s perspective and explore if or how their insights can build on your findings.”

9. Update your preprint

Michael Hoffman

Unlike traditional journal articles, preprints can be updated. “As long as this is permitted by their journal of interest, authors should submit a new version whenever they make significant changes to the manuscript,” says Hindle.

On bioRxiv, for example, 25 to 30% of authors submit a revision of their preprint. The different versions all have the same DOI, but it’s possible to link to specific versions on the server.

bioRxiv includes a “Revision Summary” field that authors can use to indicate changes from the previous version.

If a preprint server doesn’t have such a field, Hindle suggests adding this information as a comment on the preprint page.

“This information is valuable to readers who have already read the previous version and may wish to gain insight about the difference between versions,” she says.

10. Link your preprint to the published journal article

Some preprint servers automatically create links to the published final journal versions of articles. And several journals, including the PLoS journals, now add links back to the preprint.

If the journal does not do this automatically, Polka recommends adding a link to the preprint as a note at the end of the journal manuscript.

“Increased uptake of this practice would help to track the history of the manuscript to increase transparency of the research and highlight the normal progression of scientific discoveries,” says Hindle.

Further reading about preprints

"A systematic examination of preprint platforms for use in the medical and biomedical sciences setting" ( link )

"Technical and social issues influencing the adoption of preprints in the life sciences" ( link )

"bioRxiv: the preprint server for biology" ( link )

List of preprint server policies from ASAPbio

Advice from the US National Institutes of Health for selecting a preprint server

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What is a preprint?

In general, a preprint is an author's own original or draft version of their paper before any peer review has taken place and before they publish it - sometimes in a peer-reviewed journal. 

Adding your preprints gives you a great opportunity to start gaining visibility for your work early on and lets you get valuable feedback from your peers. 

Many preprints are available, usually in the form of a .doc file with minimal formatting, before the published version is available. The published version is usually the final, formatted work that you find on a publisher's website. This is the version that most library databases link to. 

What types of research usually have preprint versions?

Articles and book chapters are the most common types, but authors sometimes also  add  preprints of conference papers and posters before they publish them in conference proceedings. 

Why should I consider adding my preprints to ResearchGate?

Adding preprints is a great way to get your work out early. Here's why you should consider adding them:

• Your peers will have early access to your work and can give you  feedback   before you publish
• You  start building an audience for your work  as soon as you finish it (instead of waiting months or even years for it to be published)
• You can get a  free   Digital Object Identifier (DOI)  for your preprint that shows exactly when your work first appeared – this will make sure you get the credit you deserve, and make it easy for others to find and cite your work  
• You can  link your preprint to the final version's page ,   giving you an audience for your final work 
• You can  connect with other researchers  working in the same area  

You can also visit our blog to see why you should consider sharing your preprints with other researchers:  https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/three-reasons-to-share-your-preprints

Am I allowed to share my preprints on ResearchGate? 

Some publishers let authors share copies of their preprints without restrictions, while others allow it, but with limitations. Because publishers and journals differ on what they allow, you should always check your licensing agreement or publisher conditions before you share any of your work. Also, if you’re planning to publish in a journal, check the publisher’s policies to confirm they’ll accept your draft after it’s already been made publicly available. Check out our  Copyright   section for more information on how and where you can share your work. 

Please note:  Publishers that allow sharing of preprints usually require that they aren't formatted to make them appear like the final version of your work. 

How can reading preprints help me with my work?

A preprint is the author's earliest version of their publication, giving you access to brand new research. In most cases, preprints are added to ResearchGate within days of the author finishing their paper. Here's why you should read preprints:

• Keep up with brand new research  and decide on the future direction of your own work 
• Give feedback on early work  before it's published (and identify yourself as an expert)
• You can  connect with your readers  - the people most likely to work in the same area as you.

How do I add a preprint to my profile?

• Go to your  Profile
• Click  Add new  in the top right-hand corner of the page
• Select  Preprint
• Add details about your preprint and choose whether to add a public or private file
• Once you're done, your preprint is available from your profile. 

Note:  You must always make sure you have the right to upload any content to ResearchGate before doing so. For more information see our  Copyright  section.

How do I link my preprint to the publication page for the final version?

As soon as you publish your work, you can link your preprint to the final work's publication page. Here's how:

• Go to the  Research  tab on your profile
• On the left, select  Preprints  and locate your publication
• Click  Add published version  under the preprint title
• Select the published work you want to link to if it's already on ResearchGate, or create a new publication if it's not
• Click  Add published version
• Your published work's page is now linked and accessible directly from your preprint.

• Instructions for Authors
• Submit Log in/Register

What is Preprints.org?

Preprints.org is a multidisciplinary preprint service that is dedicated to sharing your research from the very beginning and empowering your research journey. It is fully funded by MDPI, a pioneer in scholarly, open access publishing. It is run on a non-profit basis.

What are the benefits of posting a preprint?

Establish Precedence : Publicly share and record your research through a time-stamped preprint;

Fast Dissemination : Grant the scientific community free and early access to your research findings without the delays caused by the traditional publishing process;

Increased Visibility : Enhance the discoverability of your work and attract potential collaborators rapidly;

Early Feedback : Receive input from the scientific community before a formal peer review;

Credible and Citable : A permanent digital object identifier (DOI) will be allocated, making your paper instantly citable;

Grant Applications : Preprints can serve as early evidence for grant applications;

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• Free to post and read: Preprints.org is free for both authors and readers thus maximizing access to knowledge sharing within the scientific community globally;
• No membership: We welcome new users to directly submit without requiring any endorsement;
• All Disciplines : There are no restrictions in terms of research field. Preprints.org features research across all disciplines, allowing a diverse community of authors to share their work;
• Community Engagement : Preprints.org fosters community engagement through public discussion and screening by our Advisory Board and screeners, enabling authors to receive valuable feedback and engage in the latest scientific discourse;
• Web of Science Indexing : By posting your preprint with us, your research will be indexed in the “Web of Science - Preprint Citation Index”, and thus is discoverable by a wider readership;
• Easy Submission : Navigate a straightforward, user-friendly, and efficient submission process that takes only 3 minutes;
• Make Your Work Citable : Each preprint is registered with a unique digital object identifier (DOI) issued by  Crossref , making it permanently available and citable;
• Free Layout Editing Service : This service helps authors engage their readers with a professionally presented preprint, in addition to meeting the submission requirements of journals;
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We encourage scholars to leave comments on any paper they find interesting. Preprints.org is also collaborating with PREREVIEW to receive comments and feedback from the wider research community. You can provide general comments on the presented research, make suggestions for extensions or improvements, or draw attention to certain parts for other readers. Comments will be screened for any offensive language and off-topic discussions before they are posted. Readers who would like their comments to be counted as a review can receive credit from Publons by linking their accounts.

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Click the submit button on Preprints.org to submit your paper. You will be directed to the login page first if you have not logged in. If you have not yet registered an account on Preprints.org or any other MDPI platform, you will have to register and log in first to submit your paper. You will need to provide the following information to make a submission:

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• If your paper has not been posted online yet, you can send your revised version to the assigned editor directly via email. The editors will check and post your revised version online as the first version of the paper.
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You can either directly contact the editor assigned to your paper or contact [email protected] with the necessary changes/corrections.

If you need to make authorship changes, such as adding or removing authors from the preprint paper, you will need to clarify the contributions of all authors whose authorship has changed and the reasons for this change. A form must then be signed and agreed upon by all current authors.

Can I post a paper that is not written in English on Preprints.org?

Can i submit an article to preprints.org after i have submitted it to a journal, can i submit my article to a mdpi journal directly from preprints.org, are the papers posted on preprints.org peer-reviewed.

No. The papers posted on Preprints.org are not peer-reviewed.

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Preprints.org encourages all authors to link the peer-reviewed versions of their preprint papers for the benefit of both the authors and readers. After authors have linked the peer-reviewed version of their paper to the preprint paper, the citation format of the peer-reviewed journal article will be shown on the preprint page. Linking the peer-reviewed version of the paper to a posted preprint has the following benefits:

Readers of the preprint can stay up to date on the subsequent progress of the research.

It allows the peer-reviewed version to reach a wider audience and provide more reliable references for other researchers.

By providing a link to the peer-reviewed version, Preprints.org can display citation instructions on the preprint page, encouraging readers to cite the peer-reviewed version and thereby increasing its number of citations and impact.

My paper has been rejected by a journal after being posted as a preprint. What are the implications of this?

My paper has been published in a journal. what should i do next.

Normally, no action is required from your side. Preprints.org should automatically link your preprint paper to its peer-reviewed version within 14 days. The submitting author and the corresponding author will be notified by email. Due to technical difficulties, sometimes this linking process is unsuccessful. Therefore, we encourage authors to manually link the peer-reviewed versions to their preprint papers by following the steps below:

Log into Preprints.org ;

Go to your dashboard and find the preprint article under the “online” tab;

Click the “link published article” button to submit the request.

The Preprints.org editorial office will process your request as soon as possible.

Which journals allow the posting of preprints prior to submission?

In most cases, journal publication will not be affected by posting a preprint. However, there are a few publishers who do not accept papers that have been posted on  Preprints.org  or other preprint servers prior to submission. We strongly recommend that you clarify this with all journals that you plan to submit to in advance. The preprint policies of many journals and publishers are available in the  Sherpa Romeo  database. 

Can I post an article on Preprints.org and other preprint servers at the same time?

Can i withdraw an article before it is posted on preprints.org, can i remove my article after it has been posted on preprints.org.

No. Papers posted on Preprints.org with a registered DOI cannot be removed. They are indexed by services such as Google Scholar and Crossref, creating a permanent digital presence outside of our records. In some cases, papers may be “withdrawn” at the discretion of our editors and Advisory Board for the following reasons: 

Misconduct by authors, including plagiarism and data fabrication;

Egregious scientific errors that cannot be corrected by updating the paper;

When leaving a paper online would constitute an illegal act, including copyright violation.

Please check the withdrawal policy carefully before posting your work.

What are the publishing ethics policies for Preprints.org?

Preprints.org adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics(COPE) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. Note that COPE does not currently cover preprints specifically, but many of the same principles apply, including the following:

Authors must accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion on the significance of such findings.

Plagiarism, data fabrication, image manipulation, knowingly providing incorrect information, copyright infringement, inaccurate author attributions, attempts to inappropriately manipulate the screening process, failures to declare conflicts of interest, fraud, and libel are not permitted.

The posting of the submitted materials must not be illegal.

Manuscripts containing research conducted on humans or experimental animals must follow the Declaration of Helsinki and contain details of approval from a research ethics committee. The project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be cited in the “Methods” section.

The informed consent of research participants must be obtained if necessary. Authors must be able to provide a (redacted) copy of the consent form.

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Preprints.org respects the intellectual property rights of researchers, scientists, publishers, and others and requests mutual respect among the academic community in this regard. To ensure that you have the right to upload or reproduce any published material (figures, schemes, tables, or any extract of a text), you should request permission from the copyright holder prior to posting on Preprints.org .

Permission is required for the following:

Your own research published by other publishers and for which you do not retain the copyright.

Substantial extracts from research by any authors.

The use of tables, graphs, charts, schemes, and artworks if they are unaltered or altered with minor changes.

Photographs for which you do not hold the copyright.

Permission is not required for the following:

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Short quotes that are considered fair use, and thus do not require permission, must also be properly cited.

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What license is used for Preprints.org and what are its implications?

All authors must agree to the following:

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I certify that I have the right to grant this license.

I understand that submissions cannot be completely removed once accepted by Preprints.org and may appear on websites other than Preprints.org .

What is the policy on conflicts of interest for Preprints.org?

Preprints.org applies the following ICMJE definition of a conflict of interest: “A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.” All authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to, financial interests (such as membership, employment, consultancies, ownership of stocks/shares, honoraria, grants or other funding, paid expert testimonies, and patent licensing arrangements) and non-financial interests (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, and personal beliefs). Authors can disclose potential conflicts of interest via the online submission system during the submission process. Declarations regarding conflicts of interest can also be documented in the MDPI disclosure form . The corresponding author must include a summary statement in the manuscript in a separate section, entitled “Conflicts of Interest”, placed just before the reference list. The statement should reflect all potential conflicts of interest disclosed in the form. See below for examples of disclosures: Conflicts of Interest : Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stocks in Company Y. Author C has been involved as a consultant and expert witness in Company Z. Author D is the inventor of patent X. If there are no conflicts of interest, the authors should state the following: Conflicts of Interest : The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Preprints: What is a Preprint?

What is a preprint.

• Posting and Reviewing Preprints
• Finding and Using Preprints

A preprint is version of a research manuscript that is disseminated prior to the peer review process. Preprints are frequently posted in an electronic format and often made available to the public on a preprint server such as bioRxiv  or medRxiv . Most preprints are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI) so that it is possible to cite them in other research papers. Preprints are often associated with a push towards Open Access (OA) as well as efforts to expedite the dissemination of scientific content.  While preprints have been around for several decades, the Covid-19 global pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the number of publications archived in preprint servers. A 2020 Nature article entitled " Will the pandemic permanently alter scientific publishing " explores the potential impacts of preprints on the scholarly publications life cycle. 

Pros of archiving preprints include:

• fast dissemination/discussion of research results
• feedback from the research community prior to submission to a scientific journal
• earlier documentation of the originality of research based on DOI
• exposure of research to a potentially larger group
• availability of articles that might otherwise not be published
• availability to researchers without library access

Cons of archiving preprints include: 

• dissemination of inaccurate information
• misuse of preprints by media and news outlets
• contribution to "information overload"
• refusal of some publishers to publish items that have been archived as preprints
• What are preprints? (ASAPbio)

Preprints from ASAPBio

Preprints and Peer Review in a Pandemic: Video from JHU

Preprints, NLM, and PubMed

• Preprints: Accelerating Research NLM Tutorial that provides information about Preprints.
• NIH Preprint Pilot
• NIH Preprint Pilot FAQs
• NIH Preprint Pilot: A Librarian's Toolkit
• Next: Posting and Reviewing Preprints >>

• Last Updated: Feb 20, 2024 8:51 AM
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How preprints can make research more discoverable

June 3, 2021

SSRN’s First Look offers branded preprint sites for journals and societies

Preprints, or research papers that have not yet been peer reviewed, have gained increasing prominence in scholarly publishing over the last few years as they are posted on sites such as  ChemRxiv opens in new tab/window ,  bioRxiv opens in new tab/window  and Elsevier-owned  SSRN opens in new tab/window . Their use has been a longstanding practice in some fields. In mathematics and physics, for example, almost all scientific papers are  self-archived opens in new tab/window  on the  arXiv opens in new tab/window  repository before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. In other disciplines, however, their use and the enthusiasm for them is still very much in the development phase.

Nonetheless, in an increasingly open-access driven world, a number of societies are considering the role preprints should play in their own communities.

For authors, there are a number of positives associated with posting a preprint. For example:

The paper is discoverable earlier in the publication process.

Often, the time lag between submission and publication in a scholarly journal can be months (or longer). A preprint option gives authors the ability to quickly get their work-in-progress in front of the community in advance of the official version-of-record that has been fully vetted and peer reviewed. In the age of the Internet, where information spreads quickly, researchers gain an effective way to share their early-stage research. Preprints on most servers are assigned a digital object identifier (digital currency for a publication) and are thus fully citable (including in US National Institutes of Health and Wellcome Trust grant applications opens in new tab/window ), establishing priorities of discoveries as needed. What’s more, preprints are also archived, ensuring they are made permanently available.

They give authors the ability to solicit and receive feedback.

Sharing researchers’ early work on a preprint server also gives authors the ability to publicly solicit and receive feedback on their findings, further scientific dialogue, and implement potential paper enhancements. Of course, it’s not a one-way street: for preprint servers that host public commenting, there is a public and transparent review of the preprint as well as responses to the critiques themselves.

They may increase citations.

Although not always easy to quantify, some studies show that posting a paper on a preprint server improves both its citations and altmetrics numbers opens in new tab/window .

Despite these benefits, there are some who question the value of preprints and have raised concerns that they can have a negative impact on scientific discourse if not managed carefully and with relevant disclaimers noting the preliminary nature of the research. This has come to light recently in the form of Covid-19 preprints that have the potential to be misinterpreted as having been fully peer reviewed and vetted. In the interest of transparency, reputable preprint servers, including SSRN, indicate prominently that these papers are preliminary reports that have not yet been peer reviewed.

First Look allows societies and journals to host their own preprints on SSRN

While many well-known preprint servers are multidisciplinary and journal agnostic, in recent years, societies have begun to host preprint servers specifically for their own journal communities. Elsevier’s  First Look opens in new tab/window  feature  allows societies and journals to host preprint material on a dedicated society-branded site prior to the content being considered for publication in their official journal publication — something the  American College of Cardiology opens in new tab/window  and  Acta Materialia, Inc opens in new tab/window  have done for selected journals. Moreover, First Look features a branded homepage where societies can display their logo, a short description of the applicable journals and their mission statement. Abstract pages are also branded with the society’s logo, such as this  page for  JACC: Electrophysiology opens in new tab/window .

Each preprint server also has a personalized dashboard so a society can track basic usage, and each paper posted to First Look gets its own  PlumX Analytics opens in new tab/window  page, which provides metrics on usage and citations, incuding those linked to social media engagement and news mentions. Those who want to follow their society’s preprint content streams can subscribe to get email alerts when new material is posted.

There are two routes to setting up content streams on a First Look preprint server, depending on the needs of your community:

Preprint publication at submission

Preprint publication when a paper goes out for peer review.

Preprints with The Lancet opens in new tab/window  is an example of the former; authors can opt to post their paper on the First Look site at submission, after a standard check for scope suitability.  Cell Press’s Sneak Peek site opens in new tab/window  is a version of the latter; authors can opt in to publish their work on the SSRN server when their papers are first sent for peer review.

To learn more about First Look and whether it might be a good fit for your journal or organization, please contact your publisher at Elsevier.

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Perspective

The Perspective section provides experts with a forum to comment on topical or controversial issues of broad interest.

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On the value of preprints: An early career researcher perspective

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Institute for Computational Medicine, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Center of Agronomic Research, National Institute of Agricultural Technology (IPAVE-CIAP-INTA), Córdoba, Argentina

Affiliation Department of Bioengineering, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America

Affiliation Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Affiliation Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Oeiras, Portugal

• Sarvenaz Sarabipour, 
• Humberto J. Debat, 
• Edward Emmott, 
• Steven J. Burgess, 
• Benjamin Schwessinger, 
• Zach Hensel

Published: February 21, 2019

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000151
• Reader Comments

Peer-reviewed journal publication is the main means for academic researchers in the life sciences to create a permanent public record of their work. These publications are also the de facto currency for career progress, with a strong link between journal brand recognition and perceived value. The current peer-review process can lead to long delays between submission and publication, with cycles of rejection, revision, and resubmission causing redundant peer review. This situation creates unique challenges for early career researchers (ECRs), who rely heavily on timely publication of their work to gain recognition for their efforts. Today, ECRs face a changing academic landscape, including the increased interdisciplinarity of life sciences research, expansion of the researcher population, and consequent shifts in employer and funding demands. The publication of preprints, publicly available scientific manuscripts posted on dedicated preprint servers prior to journal-managed peer review, can play a key role in addressing these ECR challenges. Preprinting benefits include rapid dissemination of academic work, open access, establishing priority or concurrence, receiving feedback, and facilitating collaborations. Although there is a growing appreciation for and adoption of preprints, a minority of all articles in life sciences and medicine are preprinted. The current low rate of preprint submissions in life sciences and ECR concerns regarding preprinting need to be addressed. We provide a perspective from an interdisciplinary group of ECRs on the value of preprints and advocate their wide adoption to advance knowledge and facilitate career development.

Citation: Sarabipour S, Debat HJ, Emmott E, Burgess SJ, Schwessinger B, Hensel Z (2019) On the value of preprints: An early career researcher perspective. PLoS Biol 17(2): e3000151. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000151

Copyright: © 2019 Sarabipour et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: ZH is supported by Project LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-007660 (Microbiologia Molecular, Estrutural e Celular) funded by FEDER funds through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. BS is supported by a Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT180100024. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript declare no financial competing interests. Non-financial competing interests: All authors are members of the eLife Ambassadors program to promote use of preprints. Benjamin Schwessinger is a member of eLife early career advisory group. Steven J. Burgess, Edward Emmott, Humberto J Debat and Zach Hensel are members of the ASAPBio Ambassador program to promote the use of preprints.

Abbreviations: DOI, digital object identifier; ECR, early career researcher

Provenance: not commissioned; externally peer reviewed

Introduction

The outputs of scientific research are varied, in the form of research articles, reviews, commentaries, perspectives, theory manuscripts, methods, data, reagents, model organisms, computational models, patents, drugs, vaccines, software, and highly trained researchers. Researchers are primarily evaluated on their record of peer-reviewed publications in traditional journals and the perceived value of the journal in which the work is published. This process has well-documented limitations [ 1 – 5 ], which provide acute challenges for early career researchers (ECRs)—graduate trainees, postdoctoral researchers, and junior group leaders, who rely heavily on timely dissemination of their work to gain feedback and recognition for their efforts.

Preprints are one mechanism to address some of these limitations. Preprints are online, freely available (open-access) scientific manuscripts posted by authors on dedicated servers prior to peer review and publication in an academic journal [ 66 – 68 ]. Most preprints in the life sciences are deposited concurrently with submission to a journal, yet some authors may choose preprint deposition as the sole way of communicating their work. These manuscripts are screened to contain appropriate content for the respective preprint server. Preprint servers make work immediately available to researchers because they do not perform peer review prior to dissemination.

Two of the largest preprint servers are arXiv (comprised of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance) and bioRxiv (repository for the life sciences). There are now over 1.3 million preprints on arXiv and approximately 40,000 preprints on bioRxiv, the latter representing the work of over 160,000 researchers from more than 100 countries. In addition, approximately 67% of bioRxiv articles posted before 2017 were subsequently published in 1,531 journals [ 76 , 80 ].

Facing an evolving landscape for publication and evaluation of research outputs, ECRs in the life sciences must decide how to use preprints for their work. Preprint servers in the life sciences have different scopes in terms of content, subject area, language, and geographic origin of the deposited work—multiple subjects (PeerJ preprints and bioRxiv), specific subjects (e.g., AgriXiv, PaleorXiv, PsyArXiv, ChemRxiv, EarthArXiv, EngrXiv, SportRxiv), and continent or language specific (e.g., AfricArxiv, IndiArxiv, Arabixiv, INArxiv). MedRxiv will soon focus on medicine and health sciences [ 36 ], which has shown the slowest uptake of preprints in the life sciences, with some leading medical journals not accepting submissions of preprinted manuscripts.

The adoption of preprinting as an academic practice has grown exponentially in recent years, and today approximately 1% to 2% of articles listed in PubMed were initially submitted as preprints [ 6 , 7 , 9 , 48 ]. The increasing number of biosciences preprints [ 7 , 8 , 9 ] reflects a realization that preprints can ameliorate systemic issues in journal-based peer review that disproportionately impact ECRs. We, as a group of ECRs in life sciences ( Box 1 ), discuss here the many ways in which ECRs benefit from depositing their manuscripts on preprint servers, accelerating science communication and career progression ( Fig 1 ).

Box 1. Author biographies.

Sarvenaz Sarabipour is a postdoctoral fellow in the Mac Gabhann lab at the Institute for Computational Medicine and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. She earned her B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from University of Sydney, Australia; her M.Sc. from Université de Sherbrooke, Canada; and her PhD in Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Sarvenaz builds multiscale computational models of receptor signaling networks in cell and tissue contexts. These models will enable design of specific systems-level molecular vascular interventions to control angiogenesis in diabetes and cardiovascular disease. She is an ambassador for eLife and an advocate for early career researchers, open-science, mentorship, diversity, and reproducibility initiatives.

Humberto Debat is a research associate at the Institute of Plant Pathology in the Center of Agronomic Research of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina. Humberto studies the interface of viruses and crops from a holobiont perspective. Humberto obtained his undergraduate and graduate training in biology at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. He is interested in novel approaches to reduce losses associated to plant diseases and passionate about understanding an expanding global virosphere. Humberto is an ambassador for eLife and ASAPbio advocating the use of preprints in life sciences.

Steven Burgess is a Carl R. Woes Institute for Genome Biology postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign. Steven earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Edinburgh. He went on to receive his doctorate from Imperial College London and did his postdoctoral work at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include photosynthesis and synthetic biology. His current focus is on optimizing the way that plants capture sunlight and use the energy for growth as part of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and UK Aid Direct. He is passionate about open-access, open-science, and reproducibility and is currently an ambassador ASAPBio, Protocols.io, and eLife.

Edward Emmott is a postdoctoral research associate in the Slavov lab at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Ed earned his bachelor’s degree in Medical Microbiology & Virology from the University of Warwick and his doctorate in Virology from the University of Leeds. His current research interests revolve around ribosome specialization and the development of methods for single cell mass spectrometry. Prior to his current position, Ed’s work focused on virus–host interactions of human and animal pathogens, working at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. Ed is an eLife and ASAPbio ambassador, advocating preprints.

Benjamin Schwessinger is a Future Fellow and independent group leader at the Australian National University. Benjamin’s team works on plant–fungi interactions on multiple molecular and temporal scales. The team is currently focusing on the genome evolution of dikaryotic rust fungi in agricultural and natural ecosystems. Benjamin is a long-time advocate for open science and has been a member of eLife’s early career advisory group with a focus on “Reproducibility for Everyone” events.

Zach Hensel is the group leader of the Single Molecule Microbiology laboratory at the Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier in Portugal. Zach studies gene regulation and other problems at the single-molecule level in living microbial cells using fluorescence microscopy. He earned his B.Sc. in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign and Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University followed by postdoctoral work at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Zach’s lab is currently focusing on new and improved methods for RNA imaging. He is an eLife and ASAPBio ambassador promoting preprint and preprint reviews.

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Preprints are an asset for ECRs. Preprints support a vibrant research culture and impact research decisions in multiple areas of the academic endeavor. The value of preprints for the biomedical workforce and biomedical research enterprise is currently underutilized. ECR, early career researcher.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000151.g001

Values of preprints for ECRs

Preprints accelerate science communication that facilitates ecr career progression.

In the current scientific publishing system, journals are the gatekeepers of knowledge, defining when and where manuscripts get published and who can obtain access. Publication of manuscripts in journals can take an average of five months, with delays of over a year being common [ 10 ]. This significant delay is caused by peer review turnaround time, editorial decision making, publisher response times, the length of production process, and resubmission cycles of rejected manuscripts [ 2 – 5 , 10 ]. The timescales of ECR training stages are often short [ 68 , 69 ]. The protracted duration of traditional journal publishing can negatively impact ECRs seeking funding, promotion, and hiring.

Preprints empower authors to decide when their work is ready to be shared with the scientific community. Knowledge from early communication of findings informs on the state of the field and ECR decisions such as which lab to join [ 39 ]. The open-access policies of preprint servers facilitate this communication, with the added benefit of encouraging collaboration, informal discussion, and sharing and receiving data, a feature often unavailable on traditional publishing platforms [ 41 ].

A number of funding institutions, including the United States National Institutes of Health, United Kingdom Medical Research Council, and the European Molecular Biology Organization, take preprints into consideration in job [ 11 , 13 , 15 , 50 ] and funding applications [ 12 , 14 , 16 , 78 ], allowing researchers’ merit to be judged on the quality of their work rather than where it is published (as stated in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) [ 17 ].

Preprints increase ECR visibility and facilitate networking

Networking is vital for ECR recognition and can increase the potential impact of ECR publications. It can also be a valuable way of receiving career development support, through peer support from ECRs or connections with mentors. Access to networking is often inhibited by the realities of ECR life today, i.e., having the time, travel authorization, and funds to travel to events to learn of cutting-edge research and to present their own work. Posting a preprint leads to a significant increase in both scientometric data (such as Altmetric attention scores, which capture mentions on social media, online, and in the news) and citations of the published paper when authors had posted the work first as a preprint [ 49 ]. Much discussion of preprints happens on social media, giving ECRs a new avenue to build their professional network.

Preprints can help ECRs accelerate training time and optimize research design and quality

The earlier we know about research performed by peers, the earlier we can incorporate this information into our own research. Early access to knowledge and data can save months to years of ECR research and training time, reduce costs, and encourage risk taking. This means working in a more informed and efficient way, with a lower likelihood that our work is redundant with something being prepared for publication.

Preprints make cutting edge results, reagents, and methods available to ECRs [ 18 ] on short-term fellowships or starting new laboratories that previously would have only been available to close colleagues prior to publication following peer review [ 68 ]. For example, in the biophysics and fluorescence microscopy fields, preprinted methods were used well in advance of the peer-reviewed publication in sample labeling [ 19 – 20 ], instrument design [ 21 – 22 ], and image analysis [ 23 ].

Preprints allow ECRs with limited funds to publish their findings with open access

The cost of publishing articles in journals is often multiple thousands of dollars, which can be prohibitive for ECRs and researchers from low-income economies with limited funds in which waivers are not available. Per-paper processing costs of preprints are low because they bear few editorial or administrative burdens associated with peer review; it is typically possible to cover costs of running a preprint server without article processing charges. Preprinting is a low-cost open-access mean of disseminating results, so that outputs are available to any researcher in the world, irrespective of whether countries and institution can afford journal publication or subscription fees [ 71 ].

Preprints in public health and medical research can boost ECR research

Preprinting is increasing in many areas of the life sciences, but uptake in medical fields has been slower. Timely circulation of results has accelerated public-health research during infectious disease outbreaks by allowing quick identification of mechanisms of disease transmission [ 24 – 25 ]. Restrictions on data sharing (with appropriate considerations for patient privacy and other ethical concerns) or postponing release of results until after journal peer review have impeded research progress [ 24 – 26 ]. Funders such as the Wellcome Trust and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have recognized this and now require researchers to preprint work with urgent public health implications [ 16 , 27 ] and subsidize publication using the postpublication peer review platform from F1000 Research.

Expedited sharing of results in physiology and epidemiology as preprints can dramatically accelerate ECR research in interdisciplinary fields [ 24 , 28 , 31 ] as it has done in physical sciences [ 29 , 30 ]. In systems biology and systems medicine, preprints and open-access data can provide biochemical and physiological parameters that are key to development of complex multiscale computational models of human health and disease [ 31 ]. In the absence of open, diverse, and timely availability of research results, efficient use of such models that link molecular networks to cells, organs, and organ systems has been slow and challenging [ 32 ]. Accelerated release of biological results and methods for data integration will promptly inform evaluation of higher-resolution predictive computational models of human pathologies, boosting ECR research concerning personalized diagnostics and therapies [ 31 , 32 ].

Similarly, medical research will benefit from open innovation via open dissemination of research results as manuscripts and open databases. Clinical trials are multimillion-dollar, years-long efforts with critically important and time-sensitive research outputs. Yet more than 70% of clinical trials deposited to the US National Library of Medicine have no associated results article [ 37 , 71 , 72 ]. Preprints can be coupled to clinical trials databases such as http://clinicaltrials.gov to inform researchers in advance of journal publication, accelerating communication among basic and translational scientists, clinicians, and physicians. Archiving preprints that describe methods and parameters used in clinical trials will inform the design of other trials [ 33 ]. A data trial project aimed to make this happen [ 35 ], leading to initiation of a new preprint server, is MedRxiv [ 37 ]. This is a significant step in increasing transparency and building a sustainable culture of curating, archiving, and efficiently sharing results via preprints in public health and medical research [ 33 , 34 ].

Preprints can accelerate the peer-review process to make ECRs more efficient

A typical life sciences manuscript receives feedback from two or more peer reviewers before publication. In many cases, authors ask for feedback from their lab and colleagues at their university, but there is no wider round of commenting until after publication. With a preprint, other researchers can discover the work sooner, potentially pointing out critical flaws or errors, suggesting new studies or data that strengthen the manuscript [ 11 , 33 ]. Public commenting on articles posted to preprint servers is uncommon (estimated at approximately 10% on bioRxiv) [ 6 , 80 ], although more frequent than commenting on journal articles. Feedback can also occur through email and social media platforms such as Twitter. Preprints can accelerate the peer-review process because (1) researchers can begin to respond to preprint comments before journal-solicited reviews are received, (2) researchers can submit higher-quality articles to journals after getting feedback from preprint readers, and (3) with the exception of a few journals [ 1 ], the journal peer review process remains largely opaque and confidential. If open preprint peer review were to become common practice, rereviewing of the same article could be avoided. We argue that the functions of journals to curate and evaluate research will be strengthened by effective utilization of preprints and open preprint peer reviews [ 40 , 42 ].

Preprint commenting can help ECRs develop their reviewer skills

Only 20% of scientists perform 69% to 94% of the all journal-solicited peer reviews culminating to 63.4 million review hours a year, 15 million of which are spent rereviewing rejected papers [ 3 , 44 ]. These hours are spent at the expense of mentorship, research, and teaching every year. The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biomedical research poses challenges for conventional peer review because manuscripts require a wider range of expert reviewers. Furthermore, the opinions of a handful of reviewers do not necessarily represent the diversity of perspectives in the scientific community [ 3 , 38 , 45 ]. Peer review does not guarantee reproducibility either, with most retractions in biomedical journals being prompted by the readership performing postpublication review [ 2 , 47 ]. Commenting on preprints by ECRs is an opportunity to sharpen their reviewing skills and to give them a voice in academic publishing that can expand and diversify the pool of peer reviewers. Platforms such as PREreview, Peeriodicals, Peer Community In, Prelights, Pubpeer, Academic Karma [ 70 ], and biOverlay have arisen to facilitate voluntary preprint-focused blogging and peer review [ 74 ]. Preprint advocacy platforms, principal investigators, and funding agencies can support preprint servers and implement methods to incentivize researchers to review and comment on preprints [ 41 , 42 , 46 , 77 ].

We strongly encourage ECRs to adopt the practice of reviewing preprints and publishing their reports. A frequent concern raised about preprint review is that it increases strain on an already overstressed peer-review system. However, preprint peer review can increase efficiency in the publication process: (1) editors can identify possible peer reviewers from those who comment on preprints (including those outside the traditional pool of reviewers); (2) preprint peer reviews can be forwarded to journals along with submissions; and (3) journals can solicit submissions from authors of preprints with reviews and/or comments demonstrating that the work is rigorous.

Looking at our respective interdisciplinary fields in computational modeling and systems biology, biophysics, genomics, biochemistry, plant sciences, mycology, and virology, we see strong, dynamic research cultures in which preprints and journal articles complement each other. Therefore, in the future, we envision an open preprint peer-review ecosystem that benefits ECRs and the scientific community as a whole by complementing journal-solicited peer review to strengthen the peer-review system and make it more efficient, accelerating the publication process and increasing constructive feedback.

Preprints helps ECRs perform corrections via revisions

In a climate in which many journals are reluctant to update manuscripts except in the case of retraction or corrections, it can cost authors thousands of dollars to publish corrections [ 2 ]. A large number of peer-reviewed papers are retracted annually [ 51 ] that in some cases could be corrected instead to address errors in the original publication. Most preprint servers, including bioRxiv, give ECRs the platform to rapidly publish manuscript addenda, such as corrections and new data sets, that supplement manuscripts as new preprints while keeping the original manuscript as vital history of a research project [ 80 ]. Preprint servers also permit attachment of supporting materials and resources that exceed limitations imposed by some journals. Versioning of manuscripts by authors to narrate research progress [ 43 , 52 ] can be a tool to increase the likelihood that articles are accurate and reproducible. For instance, bioRxiv allows the posting of “Confirmatory Results” or “Contradictory Results” types of articles that encourage the availability of replicate studies to confirm previously published work.

Publishing all research findings and conditions in preprints can benefit ECRs

Negative results, which are excluded data, unreported measures, and conditions [ 53 , 54 ] are an important output of research [ 55 , 79 ], and publication of negative results can be a time-saving source of knowledge for ECRs. Despite the cost and critical implications of biomedical research and clinical trials, most are not subjected to independent reanalysis, which would require deposition of all data, including negative results. Sharing of these results is uncommon, and these findings are hard to publish because their inclusion in manuscripts is often discouraged by journal editors and peer reviewers [ 56 ]. Novelty is often a prime criterion for being published in a journal, so it can be difficult for authors to publish null findings or replication studies. Writing separate manuscripts dedicated to negative results takes up substantial researcher time. A number of journals have emerged that are solely dedicated to publishing negative results [ 54 ], but the number of submissions to these journals have remained low, resulting in one such journal shutting down [ 53 ]. Preprints offer a platform to publishing negative results.

Perceived concerns by ECR on preprinting

A number of researchers, including ECRs, have voiced perceived concerns about preprinting. We review these concerns, noting that they need to be balanced against the benefits of preprints.

“Preprinting leads to scooping.” Preprints can be seen as a timestamp because they are posted publicly with a digital object identifier (DOI), becoming a permanent part of the scholarly record that should be referenced in journal publications [ 62 , 75 ]. We encourage all journals to explicitly state in instructions to authors that preprints are citable. There is the potential that another lab with more resources could accelerate publication for competing work or repeat an interesting experiment from a preprint and publish it before the preprint’s authors do so [ 57 ]. Yet, several journals now provide scoop protection for preprints and acknowledge the importance of being second [ 58 – 60 ]. We note that, in many fields, it takes years to conceive ideas, perform, and finalize projects for publication. Moreover, multiple independent labs reaching the same conclusion around the same time is a sign of the reproducibility and soundness of the finding and should only be supported, not penalized, by any scientist, journal, or funding agency. Furthermore, this concern of scooping predates preprints.

“Preprinting prevents publication.” Most life science journals now accept submissions of preprinted manuscripts [ 61 – 63 , 73 ]. Yet, some journals have not adapted preprint-friendly policies or have confusing or self-contradictory policies. For example, one publisher’s preprint policy states that “authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time,” including updating preprints after peer review, whereas the policy for one journal published by this publisher states that “we do not support posting of revisions that respond to editorial input and peer review.” Clarity from publishers and mandates from funders on preprints will reduce ECR uncertainty [ 62 ]. We recommend that journals choose one of a few easy-to-understand preprint policies following the models used for open-access publications and for open-access publication licenses. For example,

• Preprint ɑ (PPɑ): Preprint OK; updates to preprint after review OK; preprint automatically linked from journal article
• PPβ: Preprint OK; updates to preprint after review OK
• PPɣ: Preprint OK; reviewer/editor comments cannot be used to improve preprint
• PPδ: No preprinted manuscripts accepted

To increase preprinting frequency, journals can follow the lead of PLOS, ASM, and others by making it simple for authors to automatically post submitted manuscripts to a preprint server (bioRxiv or equivalent). PLOS journals further link back to the preprint from the PLOS article, providing useful information about manuscript history [ 66 – 67 ]. The reverse of this policy is accepting direct submissions from preprint servers, currently implemented by many journals (PLOS journals, eLife, and others [ 66 , 67 , 73 ]). The international cancer genome consortia and the 4D nucleome project require submission to bioRxiv prior to journal submission. The rapid adoption of open-access policies shows that funders are influential in shaping scientific publishing [ 16 , 64 ]. Funders such as the Chan Zuckererg Initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust are leading the way in mandating preprints of funded work [ 16 , 64 , 65 ]; we hope that public funding agencies will follow their lead.

“Preprints have low visibility.” ECRs need to receive recognition for their work, and a common impression is that preprints are transiently recognized. This may be particularly true for publications reporting negative results that are under-appreciated in journals. In response to this, we argue that the online conversation around preprints is already more robust than that around journal articles [ 49 ], and that even if it were the case, any publishing option will benefit ECRs who need to prove productivity over a short period of time [ 68 ]. We note that bioRxiv already receives over 4 million visits per month and that the increased rate of preprinting and the development of search engines to make it easier to identify relevant preprints, such as prepubmed.org, mean that visibility will likely increase.

Conclusions

Preprints are already benefiting ECRs and life scientists at large, but we argue that they are underutilized and can be used in new ways to aid ECR development and increase the efficiency of scientific research. Preprints empower trainees and amplify their voices, improving their graduate, postdoctoral, and early faculty experience by allowing others to learn about their work and helping ECRs form a professional network that can provide feedback, support, and opportunities. We urge trainees to embrace preprints and hope that principal investigators and senior researchers encourage posting and reviewing of articles on preprint servers. The open-access feature means that preprints can raise public awareness of health and medical research in all countries, especially in developing nations where researchers struggle to gain institutional funds to publish, read, and subscribe to scientific journals. Preprints also support an exciting and stimulating research culture. A strong preprinting culture can significantly reduce the negative impacts of the current publishing system on ECR work and life. It is time for our research communities and, more broadly, the biomedical research enterprise to embrace preprints to their full potential.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Lenny Teytelman for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Preprints Are Here to Stay: Is That Good for Science?

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• First Online: 30 June 2023
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Jadranka Stojanovski   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7399-522X 2 , 3 &
• Ana Marušić   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6272-0917 4  

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Scholarly communication, largely encased in traditional publications such as journals, books, and conference papers/presentations, proved ineffective during the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for change has encouraged redefining editorial policies, sharing research data in open access, accelerating and improving the peer review process, and the emergence of new ways of communicating through preprints. Although common in some research fields for decades, the increased use of preprints, in other disciplines, like medicine and health, has shown its vital role in rapidly exchanging information while opening up many questions and concerns at the same time. The benefits of preprints must be therefore balanced with the challenges they bring, especially concerning the validity and integrity of the published research and translation of preprint policies into practice. This chapter will provide a comprehensive review of preprint policies and practices. Two experts in journal research and peer review, one from medical and the other from social science research fields, join their expertise to discuss the future of preprints, particularly how different publishing stakeholders can help make research results available as soon as possible to those who need them.

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Stojanovski, J., Marušić, A. (2023). Preprints Are Here to Stay: Is That Good for Science?. In: Eaton, S.E. (eds) Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-079-7_145-1

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What is a preprint?

A preprint is a full draft of a research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed by a journal. There are many different names for preprints depending on discipline and conventions, including working paper, discussion paper, technical report.

But just remember if you are sharing research publicly before peer review, it is a preprint.

What are the benefits to me as a researcher?

• Feedback: Preprints allow you to receive valuable feedback from readers before publishing a final version
• Primacy: A preprint is a time-stamp of your research and can help prevent your work being ‘scooped’. Your preprint submission date is valid as evidence in the research timeline.
• Open: Unlike journals, which can be behind paywalls, preprints are accessible to all
• Credit: Preprints are citable outputs
• Cost: Preprint servers are free for both the depositing author and for the reader
• Versioning: Sharing versions of a paper can indicate how the research developed, which can be useful for readers and the academic record
• Speed: Unlike the journal publishing process, preprints can be deposited and made public either instantly or in a matter of days, dependent on the preprint server admittance policy
• Journals: When the time comes to submit to a journal, some preprint servers offer to transmit manuscript files and author information directly to journals on your behalf, reducing administration time. Preprint servers that support this include medRxiv (see  M2J list) and bioRxiv (see  B2J list)
• Visibility: Studies suggest that posting a preprint may have a positive effect on the citations and alternative metrics for the published article. One study is  The effect of bioRxiv preprints on citations and altmetrics , and another is  Meta-Research: Releasing a preprint is associated with more attention and citations for the peer-reviewed article

How do I "publish" a preprint?

Post the paper to a preprint server (a website similar to a repository). Some preprint servers are discipline specific (for example  arXiv ,  medRxiv , and  bioRxiv ). There are also general purpose repositories such as  Zenodo  and  Figshare  that can be used to upload preprints from all disciplines.

Some preprint servers are community-run and not-for-profit, whilst others are run by academic institutions or commercial publishers.

If you are unsure of a suitable preprint server, we recommend discussing possible servers with your co-authors or colleagues in your field. ASAP Bio maintains a  directory of servers  by subject.

You should not expect a preprint server to request money to deposit or read a preprint.

What should I consider before sharing a preprint?

• Preprints have not undergone peer review. Authors should be clear about this when sharing preprints online and refer to the College’s preprint communication advice in regards to promoting findings from preprints.
• Some journals may not accept submissions that have been shared as a preprint. Increasingly publishers are explicitly embracing preprints, but we recommend you check with your journal publisher or check a current  list of journal and publisher policies
• Wellcome Trust funded researchers are " strongly encouraged " to post preprints under a CC BY licence on a platform that is indexed in  Europe PMC and where there is a "significant public health benefit" such as the COVID-19 and Ebola pandemics are  required to publish preprints
• Authors considering patent protection should speak to their Faculty Intellectual Property office  before posting a preprint

How do I get recognition for preprints at Imperial?

After depositing in a preprint server, you can add the record to your Imperial Symplectic  account. To do this, select Working Paper as the publication type when creating your record and provide the link to the preprint server version.

By doing this your preprint will be added to our institutional repository, Spiral  which is highly indexed in search engines such as Google. By adding your preprints to Symplectic you will be able to showcase your preprints on your public profiles such as your professional web page (PWP) or ORCiD .

Caution for students

Preprints are not peer reviewed. You will need to take this into account when using preprints in your research and studies. For more information and advice on using resources for your research and studies please contact your subject librarian .

Interesting preprints

• The Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) programme is the largest piece of research looking at how the COVID-19 virus is spreading across the UK. REACT findings  have been shared via the medical preprints server medRxiv
• The Theoretical Physics Group at Imperial College London have a long history of submitting their preprints to arXiv, which can be seen on their Group preprints page

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Search for dissertations completed at the University of California, Davis and other institutions.

Preprints refer to papers that have not yet undergone peer review.

• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) This link opens in a new window The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic analogues to the traditional paper-based theses and dissertations. This website contains information about the initiative, how to set up Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) programmes, how to create and locate ETDs, and current research in digital libraries related to NDLTD and ETDs.
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations This link opens in a new window OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1000 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 2,311,795 theses and dissertations.
• EdArXiv This link opens in a new window A free, open source database developed by education researchers in collaboration with the Center for Open Science. Includes articles under review (preprints), working papers and unpublished work.
• Social Sciences Research Network / Economic Research Network (SSRN/ERN) This link opens in a new window See EduRN . The Education Research Network on SSRN is an open access preprint server. SSRN provides the opportunity to share different outputs of research such as preliminary or exploratory investigations, book chapters, PhD dissertations, course and teaching materials, presentations, and posters among others.
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Uploading a master's thesis to preprints?

This is a silly question, but because of the somewhat random nature of what examiner one is assigned at the completion of the thesis, my institution will not be publishing the file on the electronic database. It is a perfectly decent thesis and was on the verge of being uploaded. Given that I actually have some new and useful theoretical findings, I was thinking if it is worthwhile uploading it on something like preprints instead?

And before you tell me to make it into a publishable paper; I simply don't have the energy to do it at the moment. Maybe if I upload it to preprints I could work on a publishable version later on down the line when I am on my phd, or otherwise have more spare time? All I want is for it to be searchable and referenceable.

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Preprint  

• Preprint egusphere-2024-2206

Distinct effects of Fine and Coarse Aerosols on Microphysical Processes of Shallow Precipitation Systems in Summer over Southern China

Abstract. The densely populated South China, adjacent to the South China Sea, which is associated with shallow precipitation during summer, makes it a natural experimental region for studying the impact of aerosols on shallow precipitation events. Using 8 years of GPM DPR, MERRA-2 aerosol, and ERA reanalysis data, this study investigates the potential influence of coarse and fine aerosol modes on the precipitation structure and microphysical processes of shallow precipitation in South China. Statistical results indicate that during coarse aerosol-polluted conditions, shallow precipitation clouds have a lower median Storm Top Height (STH, ~3.2 km), but a higher mean near-surface rainfall (RR, ~1.78 mm h -1 ), characterized by high concentrations of large raindrops, mainly driven by significant collision-coalescence processes (accounting for 74.1 %). Conversely, during fine aerosol-polluted conditions, shallow precipitation clouds develop deeper median STH ~3.7 km with lower surface RR characterized by a low concentration of small hydrometeors, resulting from increased breakup processes (33.1 %) and reduced collision-coalescence processes (69.6 %). The coarse (fine) aerosols act as promoters (inhibitors) of the radar and radar reflectivity in the profile of shallow precipitation, regardless of dynamic and humid conditions. The effect of coarse aerosols in promoting precipitation and the inhibiting effect of fine aerosols are the most significant under low humidity conditions, mainly attributed to the significantly enhanced collision-coalescence processes, exceeding 22.2 %. Furthermore, the increase in RR above 3 km during coarse aerosol-polluted environments is mainly driven by the high concentration of hydrometeors in low instability conditions, while by large hydrometeors in high instability environments.

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Geoheritage of the iconic en280 leba road (huila plateau, southwestern angola): inventory, geological characterization and quantitative assessment for outdoor educational activities.

1. Introduction

2. area framework, 2.1. location and accessibility, 2.2. geological and geomorphological settings.

Click here to enlarge figure

3. Methodology

• Geological Value (GlV): this encompasses secondary indicators such as Scientific Value (ScV) and Additional Values (AdV); GlV = ScV + AdV.
• Management Value (MnV): this integrates secondary indicators including Use Value (UsV) and Protection Value (PrV); MnV = UsV + PrV.

4. The EN280 Leba Road and the Inventory of Its Outcrops

4.1. identification and type of the geosites, 4.2. characterization and qualitative assessment of geosites, 4.2.1. stop 1 (gl1)—traditional mining clay pit in the humpata plateau, 4.2.2. stop 2 (gl2)—old lime oven of leba, 4.2.3. stop 3 (gl3)—view point of the serra da leba, 4.2.4. stop 4 (gl4)—vertical layers at the beginning of the descent, 4.2.5. stop 5 (gl5)—slope of the fault propagation fold, 4.2.6. stop 6 (gl6)—reverse fault in granitoid rocks, 4.2.7. stop 7 (gl7)—dolerite curve, 4.2.8. stop 8 (gl8)—ductile simple shear zone, 5. quantification of the geosites, 5.1. numerical assessment, 5.1.1. determination of the scientific value (scv), 5.1.2. determination of additional value (adv), 5.1.3. determination of use value (usv), 5.1.4. determination of protection value (prv), 5.1.5. determination of the total value (ttv), 5.2. geosite ranking, 5.3. the meaning of the numerical assessment, 6. outdoor didactic activities for a field guide.

• Understanding and identifying the general characteristics of the three major rock groups;
• Familiarity with the origins of the three major rock groups;
• Recognition of the effects of Earth internal processes on rock deformation;
• Awareness of the impact of Earth external processes on rock weathering and erosion;
• Ability to read and interpret maps and scales;
• Understanding of the regional geology of the Serra da Leba;
• Acknowledgment of humanity’s role in exploiting and managing georesources and its impact on environmental changes;
• Familiarity with conduct expectations in an outdoor environment.
• Recognition of the importance of conserving both the natural and built heritage.

7. Discussion

7.1. the quantification of the proposed geosites: geoheritage and educational potential, 7.2. the geoeducational aspects of the proposed traverse.

• (b) Geological time and age of the Earth
• (c) Rock deformation and tectonics
• (d) Anthropic changes and the sustainable exploitation of georesources

8. Conclusions

Author contributions, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Lopes, F.C.; Ramos, A.M.; Callapez, P.M.; Andrade, P.S.; Duarte, L.V. Geoheritage of the Iconic EN280 Leba Road (Huila Plateau, Southwestern Angola): Inventory, Geological Characterization and Quantitative Assessment for Outdoor Educational Activities. Land 2024 , 13 , 1293. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13081293

Lopes FC, Ramos AM, Callapez PM, Andrade PS, Duarte LV. Geoheritage of the Iconic EN280 Leba Road (Huila Plateau, Southwestern Angola): Inventory, Geological Characterization and Quantitative Assessment for Outdoor Educational Activities. Land . 2024; 13(8):1293. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13081293

Lopes, Fernando Carlos, Anabela Martins Ramos, Pedro Miguel Callapez, Pedro Santarém Andrade, and Luís Vítor Duarte. 2024. "Geoheritage of the Iconic EN280 Leba Road (Huila Plateau, Southwestern Angola): Inventory, Geological Characterization and Quantitative Assessment for Outdoor Educational Activities" Land 13, no. 8: 1293. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13081293

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