BESE Research Guide: Preprint Services

Guide for the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division

What are Preprints?

A preprint is a version of a research manuscript published before peer review. Typically these documents and made freely available on large databases - preprint servers or repositories. Publishing a preprint aims to speed up the process of disseminating research, u to generate a conversation around your research and gain feedback from others.

Preprints have a number of benefits:

they enable researchers to establish an early claim for your research findings;
they signal to colleagues and other researchers your research interests and encourage collaboration and feedback;
you can publish the outputs such as posters, protocols, papers, and presentations that are not suitable for journal publication;
they provide evidence of authors productivity as well as improve their visibility;
preprints are open access, anyone can see your preprint and they are easily shared or discoverable using web search tools such as CORE and SHARE;
preprints are the fastest way to share and disseminate your research.
easy and open access usually means more citations.

bioRxiv

bioRxiv

An open access preprint repository for the biological sciences.

Nature Preceding

nature precedings

Preprint server for Life Sciences (no longer accepting submissions, but the archive is still accessible).

Peer J Preprints Preprint

Peer J Preprints

Preprint server for Biology, Health Sciences, and Computer Science.

ChemRxiv

ChemRxiv

"The American Chemical Society (ACS) is in the process of developing ChemRxiv ™, a chemistry preprint server for the global chemistry community."

MarXiv

MarXiv

"The free research repository for the ocean and marine-climate sciences. Part of the Center for Open Science Network."

ASAPbio

ASAPbio

"ASAPbio is a scientist-driven initiative to promote the productive use of preprints in the life sciences."

Peer J Preprints

https://peerj.com/preprints/

"PeerJ is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal. It considers articles in the Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Health Sciences".

The Winnower

The Winnowed

"The Winnower is an open access online scholarly publishing platform that employs open post-publication peer review."

Preprints.org

preprints.org

MDPI is one of the few publishers to develop a preprint server.

"...dedicated to making early versions of research outputs available, including original research articles and reviews. Content on Preprints is not yet peer reviewed and can receive feedback from readers."

preLights

PreLights: Preprint highlights, selected by the biological community

As the number of preprints grows, it will become increasingly difficult to find and filter relevant/interesting preprints. preLights does some of that work for you. Our dedicated team of scientists (or PreLighters) from the community select, highlight and comment on preprints they feel are of particular interest to the biological community.

arXiv

https://arxiv.org/

"Started in August 1991, arXiv.org (formerly xxx.lanl.gov) is a highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server for research articles. Covered areas include physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, and statistics. arXiv is maintained and operated by the Cornell University Library with guidance from the arXiv Scientific Advisory Board and the arXiv Member Advisory Board, and with the help of numerous subject moderators."

PrePubMed

PrePubMed

"PrePubMed indexes preprints...articles are not stored on PrePubMed, but you will be linked to the article at the respective site."

MedRxiv

MedRxiv

The preprint server for health sciences.

"Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information".