What Are Preprints? How They’re Changing Scientific Publication
We discuss the use of preprints to accelerate research as well as 'Introductory Commas' in our latest Virtus Language Tip ... Settle in and enjoy!
What Are Preprints?
A preprint is a scientific manuscript shared publicly on a free, open-access platform called a preprint server. There, it can receive feedback before or during the formal peer review process. This public sharing gets new research into the public eye faster, while helping find fault and ultimately produce better science.
In the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, the research community released more than 125,000 COVID-19-related articles. Because of the need to share findings faster, more than 30,000 of them were preprints.
In addition to slashing publication speed from months to days, preprints allow prompt peer feedback, let researchers mark their work with an ID and establish primacy, and help the authors improve their work before they submit it for formal publication.
Definition of a preprint
According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) a preprint is “a scholarly manuscript posted by the author(s) in an openly accessible platform, usually before or in parallel with the peer review process.”
In other words, it’s “pre-publication” – made public before or during formal peer review and before a journal publishes it.
Preprints are also called the author’s original manuscript (AOM). So, a preprint (or AOM) is essentially a draft, but it’s typically in a state ready for review. It lets the authors get almost immediate feedback while attaching an ID to mark it as their original work.
…. But first this ….
This section is sponsored by Virtus Publishing: You can get 20% off self-publishing your book with Virtus ….
In a series of posts within posts, our friends at Virtus Publishing will provide tips and advice covering many aspects of publishing. This next series will be an ongoing selection of language tips, covering areas that many copy editors (and authors) find difficult. These will be short and to the point.
Virtus Publishing Language Tip #8: Introductory Commas
Writing (and copyediting errors) concerning comma usage are common, particularly involving incorrect introductory commas. Let’s examine this tricky issue.
Part of the confusion is likely caused by the fact that some authors or copy editors may not be taking the context into account.
Here’s an excerpt from excellent guidelines from the Purdue Online Writing Lab (which I highly recommend) concerning commas after introductions:
“Introductory clauses start with adverbs like after, although, as, because, before, if, since, though, until, when, etc.”
There is no disputing this fact, but in practice many people ignore the words “start with”: As a result they see any of these words and incorrectly insert a comma immediately after the first word:
This is incorrect:
Although, it’s a desert, there are many flowers and plants at White Sands National Monument.
Here’s the same sentence correctly punctuated:
Although it’s a desert, there are many flowers and plants at White Sands National Monument.
The comma should be at the conclusion of the introductory clause.
It is critical to remember the following points, as stated by Purdue OWL. This material has been edited for content and reformatted for clarity. The end of the quoted material is denoted by the box (∎):
Introductory Clauses
Introductory clauses are dependent clauses that provide background information or "set the stage" for the main part of the sentence, the independent clause. For example:
If they want to win, athletes must exercise every day.
(introductory dependent clause, main clause)
Because he kept barking insistently, we threw the ball for Smokey.
(introductory dependent clause, main clause)
Introductory phrases
Introductory phrases also set the stage for the main action of the sentence, but they are not complete clauses. Phrases don't have both a subject and a verb that are separate from the subject and verb in the main clause of the sentence. Common introductory phrases include prepositional phrases, appositive phrases, participial phrases, infinitive phrases, and absolute phrases.
To stay in shape for competition, athletes must exercise every day.
(introductory infinitive phrase, main clause)
Barking insistently, Smokey got us to throw his ball for him.
(introductory participial phrase, main clause)
A popular and well respected mayor, Bailey was the clear favorite in the campaign for governor.
(introductory appositive phrase, main clause)
The wind blowing violently, the townspeople began to seek shelter.
(introductory absolute phrase, main clause)
After the adjustment for inflation, real wages have decreased while corporate profits have grown.
(introductory prepositional phrases, main clause)
Introductory words
Introductory words like however, still, furthermore, and meanwhile create continuity from one sentence to the next.
The coaches reviewed the game strategy. Meanwhile, the athletes trained on the Nautilus equipment.
Most of the evidence seemed convincing. Still, the credibility of some witnesses was in question.
When to use a comma
Introductory elements often require a comma, but not always. Use a comma in the following cases:
After an introductory clause.
After a long introductory prepositional phrase or more than one introductory prepositional phrase.
After introductory verbal phrases, some appositive phrases, or absolute phrases.
If there is a distinct pause.
To avoid confusion.
When not to use a comma
Some introductory elements don't require a comma, and sometimes the subject of a sentence looks like an introductory element but isn't. Do not use a comma in the following cases:
After a brief prepositional phrase. (Is it a single phrase of fewer than five words?)
After a restrictive (essential) appositive phrase.
To separate the subject from the predicate.
Each of the following sentences may look like it requires a comma after the opening segment, but the opening segment is really the subject. It's sometimes easy to confuse gerund- or infinitive-phrase subjects like the following with nonessential introductory phrases, so be careful.
Preparing and submitting his report to the committee for evaluation and possible publication was one of the most difficult tasks Bill had ever attempted.
To start a new business without doing market research and long-term planning in advance would be foolish.
Extracting the most profit for the least expenditure on labor and materials is the primary goal of a capitalist.
Most of the evidence seemed convincing. Still, the credibility of some witnesses was in question.
∎
Another issue I’ve seen a lot comes up with the conjunction “while.”
Here’s an example of that type of error I’ve seen in copyediting testing that I’ve conducted:
While, a great deal occurs below the threshold of our awareness, ...
Many copy editors left the comma after “while”: It is incorrect.
Similarly, another sentence in the same test appears like this:
Although most of us have no problem ranking the importance of decisions...
Many copy editors inserted a comma after “although”: This is incorrect.
When we are writing or copyediting it’s imperative that we read all text thoroughly for meaning and context. Without reading carefully (and checking what we’ve written) we can easily overlook these issues.
Like this post? Follow Virtus Publishing on LinkedIn!
Have you ever wanted to publish a book?
Virtus Publishing’s self-publishing services can make it happen! A global service provider, Virtus has the industry experience and dedicated staff to turn your book idea into reality.
Send an email to david@virtuspublishing.com to set up a free consultation. Mention the keyword “Desert” and receive 20% off your first order.
… back to the blog:
What is a “preprint server”?
Preprint servers are online repositories that let you post this early version of your manuscript online.
Since 2010, more than 60 new preprint servers have formed. A few have disbanded, while some have consolidated under leaders such as the nonprofit Center for Open Science. It’s a dynamic playing field.
Most of these servers are based on an open-source code that’s free to the public to use and modify.
Preprint servers’ providers include universities, non-profit institutions promoting scientific research, and for-profit publishing companies, like Elsevier’s SSRN.
How can authors benefit from Preprint servers?
One big advantage of putting out your research work in preprint form is that you, the author(s), are also able to choose to assign these documents a digital object identifier (DOI) number. Assignment of a DOI even at an early stage means that your work, your results, your figures and data, can be cited by others without waiting for the full published article to appear.
Preprints have proved popular with academic authors because they enable content sharing before formal peer-reviewed publication, a process that can often be very slow.
What is a preprint server?
Preprint servers are online repositories for preprints.
A number of ‘preprint servers’ have been created and developed to host this kind of content, sometimes controlled by publishers, scholarly societies, or other – often subject-specific – organisations. You can click here to see a complete list and find a server suitable for your research area.
Preprint servers are thus online storage repositories where authors can deposit manuscripts of their paper prior to peer-review and eventual publication. Preprint servers:
· Provide subject-area specific mechanisms for communities of researchers to share their work before articles are formally sent into the academic journal system.
· Enable researchers to quickly and effectively establish the priority of a particular idea, hypothesis, experiment, or calculation.
· Often mean that peer-review feedback can be solicited in real time, much faster than via formal journal-controlled peer-review.
Currently operational preprint servers
AgriXiv is a server for papers in the field of agriculture.
arXiv is a server for papers in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, finance, and statistics.
Authorea is a server for papers in any field.
Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences Social is a server for papers across the sciences
bioRxiv is a server for papers in biology.
The CERN document server is a server for papers in particle physics.
ChemArxiv is a server for papers in chemistry.
ChinaXiv is a server hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a repository for papers across all subject areas.
Cogprints is a server for papers in psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, and biology.
The CORE repository is a server for language articles.
The Cryptology ePrint Archive is a server for papers dealing with cryptology.
EarthArXiv is a preprint server for papers in Earth sciences.
E-lis is a server for articles dealing with library and information science.
The Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity is an archive for articles in computer science.
engrxiv is a server for engineering articles.
INA-Rxiv is a server hosting articles across all subject areas.
LawArxiv is a server for articles dealing with law and associated subjects.
The LIA Scholarship Archive hosts articles that deal with librarian and information science.
The LingBuzz archive hosts papers in linguistics.
MindRxiv is an archive for mind and contemplative practices articles.
NutriXiv hosts articles that encompass the nutritional sciences.
PaleorXiv is a repository for articles in paleontology.
PeerJ preprints hosts papers that deal with biological, medical, health, and computer sciences.
Preprints.org is a repository for articles across all subject areas.
PsyArXiv hosts articles in psychology.
RePEc is a server for Economics.
Research Square in a multidisciplinary preprint server, now the largest in the world.
SocArxiv hosts articles in social sciences.
SportRxiv is a server for work in sport science.
The SSRN database is a repository for social science articles.
Therapoid is a server for articles that deal with therapeutics.
The Zenodo server hosts article preprints from all areas.
Which factors led to the development and rise of preprint servers?
Preprint servers or repositories (see for e.g., https://socopen.org/) the home of SocArXiv) are now widespread online but grew initially as a function of our ever-increasing use of online resources for research generally and as a response to the sometimes glacially slow pace of formal academic peer-review.
Researchers want to be able to share their data, results, and ideas with their peers and colleagues as fast as possible and not have to wait for three months or more for their article to appear in a peer-reviewed journal. The average time from submission, through peer-review, to online publication is 90 days.
This traditional process can be very slow and is therefore perhaps not the best way for authors to quickly share their work: some of the fastest Open Access (OA) journals still take time to solicit and process peer-review comments on papers, wait for authors to make changes, and then type-set and produce the finished article.
Do Preprints allow you to share your academic research faster?
A faster way to get work ‘out there’ is to simply upload a finished manuscript (or even an earlier stage part of a manuscript, such as an abstract) to a preprint server. The work is then assigned a DOI and released publically under a Creative Commons (CC) Attribution 4.0 International License. These two tie content ownership of a work back to authors and mean that others can get involved: Making comments online or even re-using the work in their own articles and research fully aware that it has actually not been formally peer-reviewed.
What about my intellectual property (IP) if I use a Preprint server?
All of this sounds good, but one worry academics have it protecting their IP:
· Isn’t is a bad idea to ‘publish’ my work on a preprint server before it’s been formally peer-reviewed and accepted in a journal?
· Somebody else might steal my ideas
This is why preprints servers assign DOI numbers and CC licenses. Your work is protected online - it can be re-used, but must be attributed and cited. These assigned numbers can simply be picked up by academic journals if they want to take the article further and formally publish.
Preprints as part of Open Research (OR)
It should come as no surprise then that preprint servers are an important component of OR, the umbrella term that is used to refer to all ways in which research is made available to the community without charge and under the control of authors. Increasing numbers of journals are taking advantage of these servers, even creating their own preprint servers tied to publications, to speed up the whole academic publishing workflow, including – potentially – the peer-review process.
Can Preprints speed up peer-review?
What about a situation where a manuscript version is uploaded onto a preprint server, two or three established academics working in the same field make useful and insightful comments, and the authors are then able to revise their working document.
Is this really any different to traditional journal peer-review?
Many colleagues, especially in the OR community, would argue no: Indeed, a number of online only fully OA journals now operate according to this model (see, for e.g., PeerJ; https://peerj.com) and more and more ‘traditional’ publishers are picking up articles from these sites. Four publishers - Elsevier, Nature, The Public Library of Science (PLoS) and Oxford University Press now publish around 47% of bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/)preprints (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1265).
Useful preprint resources
The ASAPbio resource center has all things preprints.
PLOS’s preprints pages display how journals communicate with authors and readers on the use of preprints.
Have a look at a report on the transformative role of preprints published by Knowledge Exchange in 2019.
Read discussion papers on preprints by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Watch this video of a panel discussion on preprint ethics posted on the COPE website.
Read a study on the ten essential things to consider about preprint submissions.