Preprint

In the world of academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review. This means the research has not yet been officially checked by other experts in the field. While the standard publishing process can take weeks, months, or even years, preprints allow for much faster sharing.

Researchers use these manuscripts to circulate current results quickly within the scholarly community. This speed is vital for keeping science moving forward at a rapid pace.

To understand how this works, we must look at the different stages of a scientific paper. First, there is the preprint, which is the initial manuscript before peer review. Next comes the postprint, which is an article that has undergone peer review but is still being prepared for a journal. Both of these versions are often called e-prints or eprints.

Finally, there is the published version, which is the formal, finished product found in a journal. A preprint is often a non-typeset version, meaning it might not have the final professional layout of a journal article.

There are several reasons why scientists choose to distribute preprints. One major advantage is the ability to receive early feedback from peers. This feedback helps authors revise and prepare their articles more effectively before formal submission. Preprints also serve to demonstrate the precedence of discoveries. By making a discovery public quickly, authors can protect their intellectual property and discourage competing parties from patenting the same idea. Additionally, preprints can increase the number of citations a paper receives and encourage academic collaborations.

However, using preprints also comes with specific risks and disadvantages. Because they have not undergone peer review, there is a lack of formal quality control. This can lead to concerns about premature data or the rush to post low-quality research. There is also a risk regarding how the media covers these papers. Sometimes, news reports may not properly present the inherent uncertainty found in a preprint. Furthermore, some journals follow the Ingelfinger Rule, which is a strategy used to discourage researchers from sharing reports before they are officially published.

The history of preprints shows how they have evolved from paper to digital formats. In the 1960s, the National Institutes of Health circulated biological preprints through Information Exchange Groups. These groups were stopped after six years because some journals refused to accept submissions that had been shared through those channels. Since 1991, however, preprints have been increasingly distributed electronically via the internet. This shift led to the creation of massive preprint databases like arXiv and HAL, which serve as digital repositories for researchers.

Significant changes occurred in 2017 to support this way of sharing science. In February 2017, a coalition of biomedical funding bodies, including the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, proposed a central site for life-sciences preprints. During that same year, the National Institutes of Health issued a policy encouraging preprint submissions. By the end of the 2010s, many libraries began integrating Unpaywall data. This tool indexes millions of preprints and helps users access research without needing expensive subscriptions.

One of the most notable examples of preprint importance occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for rapid research on the disease caused a massive wave of preprints to be released. Because the formal peer-review process was proving too slow for an active pandemic, scientists bypassed it to share data immediately. This surge contributed to the largest single-year increase in scholarly articles ever recorded. In mathematics, preprints have also been used for monumental achievements. Between 2002 and 2003, Grigori Perelman published papers on the arXiv server to prove the Poincaré conjecture. He famously declined both the Fields Medal and a $1 million Millennium Prize for this work.

Today, preprint servers are organized into several distinct categories. General servers, such as Authorea, accept almost all types of preprints. Field-specific servers focus on certain subjects, such as bioRxiv for biology or ChemRxiv for chemistry. There are also regional servers like AfricArxiv and Arabixiv. These servers can be owned by private companies, universities, or independent non-profit organizations. By providing these various specialized spaces, the scientific community ensures that information can flow freely across the globe.