Preprint servers: follow arXiv's lead

Predecessors of preprint servers

Although there was an early experiment in the 1960s with the central distribution of paper preprints in the biomedical sciences, these sciences have not been early adopters of electronic preprint servers. Some barriers to the development of a ‘preprint culture’ in the biomedical sciences are described. Multiple factors that, from the 1960s, fostered the transition from a paper-based preprint cu...

Preprint servers facilitate scientific discourse.

Preprints are scientificmanuscripts posted online before formal peer-review and publication in journals. Preprints have become prominent in scientific publishing, which is increasingly shaped by an emphasis on speed, transparency, and accessibility. Important as they are, those factors are entwined with the journal’s primary role as an arbiter of the rigor and significance of scientific scholar...

Bringing PLOS Genetics Editors to Preprint Servers

1 HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, Alabama, United States of America, 2 Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America, 3 Department of Genetics, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States of America, 4 Department of Genetics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of Am...

Should there be greater use of preprint servers for publishing reports of biomedical science?

Vitek Tracz and Rebecca Lawrence declare the current journal publishing system to be broken beyond repair. They propose that it should be replaced by immediate publication followed by transparent peer review as the starting place for more open and efficient reporting of science. While supporting this general objective, we suggest that research is needed both to understand why biomedical scienti...

The impact of preprint servers and electronic publishing on biomedical research.