Category Archives: oa.repositories.preprints

Job Information – The University of Manchester

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“The Criminology department sits within the School of Social Sciences and is a research-oriented department delivering excellent teaching to undergraduate and postgraduate students. We are seeking to appoint a Research Assistant to support CrimRxiv, undertake research on the legal, ethical and technical barriers faced by green open access platforms across disciplines, and contribute to the sustainability of CrimRxiv.

CrimRxiv is the only open access repository devoted to criminology, and ensures that anyone can read the publications it makes available, entirely for free. This site offers functionalities for authors to share their research articles (working papers, preprints, versions of record, and postprints), preregistrations, reviews, chapters and books in open access, at no cost for authors or readers. Since its launch in 2020, CrimRxiv has freely shared over 2,000 publications, with nearly 230,000 views by more than 112,000 readers from 209 countries. In March 2023, it was officially announced that The University of Manchester would become the new home of CrimRxiv, the global repository and hub for open access publications in criminology. This was the result of collaborative efforts from UoM’s Department of Criminology and Library, with the support of UoM’s Leadership team, and further strengthens UoM’s reputation as global leader in criminology and open research.

The successful candidate will work alongside Dr David Buil-Gil (Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Criminology and CrimRxiv’s Managing Moderator), Prof Judith Aldridge (Professor of Criminology and Director of CrimRxiv), and Prof Scott Jacques (Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Georgia State University and Founder of CrimRxiv) to undertake a first-of-its-kind study on the legal, ethical and technical barriers of open access hubs, ensure an efficient moderation of manuscripts submitted to CrimRxiv, design marketing campaigns to ensure CrimRxiv is widely known and used by criminologists worldwide, and apply for grants to ensure the site’s medium and long-term sustainability….”

Supporting PsyArXiv: Your Support Matters!

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“PsyArXiv, the psychological science preprint server, needs your support to continue serving as a free platform for sharing our work.

Created during SIPS 2016 by SIPS members like you, PsyArXiv is one of the most successful SIPS Products. It is maintained by SIPS and hosted by OSF Preprints, which allows it to seamlessly interface with OSF projects. PsyArXiv currently hosts around 30 thousand preprints with more than 6,000 new manuscripts being added every year, and an average of 9 thousand page views per day!…”

Characterization of Comments About bioRxiv and medRxiv Preprints | Medical Journals and Publishing | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network

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“Question  What is the content of the comments posted on the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint platforms?

Findings  In this cross-sectional study, 7.3% of preprints from 2020 had received at least 1 comment (mean follow-up of 7.5 months), with a median length of 43 words. Criticisms, corrections, or suggestions (most commonly regarding interpretation, methodological design, and data collection) were the most prevalent types of content in these comments, followed by compliments and questions.

Meaning  This study found that, although rare, when comments were present on the preprint platforms, they addressed relevant topics that would be expected to emerge from peer review.

Preprints.org – The Multidisciplinary Preprint Platform

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“Preprints.org is a multidiscipline platform providing preprint service that is dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors as long as the updated content has not been published online. Content on Preprints.org is not peer-reviewed and can receive feedback from readers….”

Introducing arXiv’s new governance model – arXiv blog

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“In early 2022, arXiv embarked on a plan to reorganize its governance. We are happy to report that arXiv leadership, with significant input from its advisory board members, has finalized a new governance model. 

New Bylaws went into effect on July 1, 2023. As part of the governance restructuring, the Member Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Board were retired, and three new Advisory Councils were created:

Editorial Advisory Council (EAC)—The Editorial Advisory Council acts as the editorial board of arXiv. It organizes and monitors moderation of arXiv content. The former Subject Advisory Committees have been renamed Section Editorial Committees, and the chairs (also known as editors) of these committees are the regular members of the Editorial Advisory Council.
Institutions Advisory Council (IAC)—The Institutions Advisory Council represents the scholarly communications community and advises on topics such as issues related to publishing, standards, open access and open science; issues related to the arXiv membership program and policy; arXiv services, interoperability and advocacy to the community; user needs, metadata, technical and user trends, and other issues guiding the sustainability and success of arXiv. Institutions Advisory Council members must be affiliated with an arXiv member organization.
Science Advisory Council (SAC)—The Science Advisory Council represents the scientific and research community of arXiv by advising on topics such as intellectual impact and relevance of arXiv, including aspects of significant expansions, high-level issues of standards, expansion in new fields/sections, novelties and changes in the production and dissemination of scholarly works, and impact across disciplines. Science Advisory Council members should be active researchers, be tenured or in a position with similar seniority/stability, be recognized experts in their field, and have had a leadership position and/or successful experience in advisory committees….”

eLife and PREreview to enhance the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem through adoption of COAR Notify | For the press | eLife

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“eLife and PREreview are pleased to announce that the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) will provide them with technical and funding support to implement the COAR Notify technology. With this support, the organisations will work to connect separate services within the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem.

The project will put in place the basic infrastructure and protocols needed for all-round and standardised connections between preprint repositories, community-led preprint review platforms, journals, and preprint review aggregation and curation platforms. The aim is to lower existing technological and cost barriers so that as many of these services as possible can more easily participate in the ‘publish, review, curate’ future for research….”

eLife and PREreview to enhance the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem through adoption of COAR Notify | For the press | eLife

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“eLife and PREreview are pleased to announce that the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) will provide them with technical and funding support to implement the COAR Notify technology. With this support, the organisations will work to connect separate services within the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem.

The project will put in place the basic infrastructure and protocols needed for all-round and standardised connections between preprint repositories, community-led preprint review platforms, journals, and preprint review aggregation and curation platforms. The aim is to lower existing technological and cost barriers so that as many of these services as possible can more easily participate in the ‘publish, review, curate’ future for research….”

The rise of preprints in earth sciences | F1000Research

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Abstract:  The rate of science information’s spread has accelerated in recent years. In this context, it appears that many scientific disciplines are beginning to recognize the value and possibility of sharing open access (OA) online manuscripts in their preprint form. Preprints are academic papers that are published but have not yet been evaluated by peers. They have existed in research at least since the 1960s and the creation of ArXiv in physics and mathematics. Since then, preprint platforms—which can be publisher- or community-driven, profit or not for profit, and based on proprietary or free and open source software—have gained popularity in many fields (for example, bioRxiv for the biological sciences). Today, there are many platforms that are either disciplinary-specific or cross-domain, with exponential development over the past ten years. Preprints as a whole still make up a very small portion of scholarly publishing, but a large group of early adopters are testing out these value-adding tools across a much wider range of disciplines than in the past. In this opinion article, we provide perspective on the three main options available for earth scientists, namely EarthArXiv, ESSOAr/ESS Open Archive and EGUsphere.

 

A Year of Jxiv – Warming the Preprints Stone

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“But alongside the growth of field-focused repositories, more recently there has been a trend towards developing preprint repositories that cater to communities associated with a particular country or language group. And while scholarship is often said to be borderless, as with real estate, when it comes to preprint servers, increasingly it’s location, location, location….

However, for all their potential benefits, regional and national repositories sometimes suffer from low uptake by the communities they serve and can struggle to secure sufficient funding to cover even modest infrastructure and administrative costs. They therefore typically operate on a shoestring, frequently relying on the efforts of volunteers who, no matter how well-intentioned and industrious, are placed in the invidious position of having to balance their commitment to the repository with competing demands of full-time academic and institutional roles. Such pressures can prove unsustainable, and in recent years have sadly claimed repositories serving the Arabic and francophone language communities, as well as that supporting researchers in Indonesia. IndiaRXiv, the repository launched in 2019 with the aim of boosting science research on the subcontinent, was forced to pull down the shutters temporarily in 2020 but has since reopened with a new hosting partner….

Although to many observers outside of Japan, the appearance of Jxiv was rather sudden, the idea of a Japanese national repository had actually been mooted for some time. However, the initiative gained renewed impetus with the outbreak of COVID-19, according to Ritsuko Nakajima, Director of the Department for Information Infrastructure at JST. “Whilst preprinting expanded rapidly in the early stages of the pandemic, the number of preprints coming out of Japan was relatively small and this concerned us,” Nakajima stated, noting that in an analysis provided by the National Institute for Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP), a leading national research institute charged with providing information and other support for the policy-making process, showed that Japan ranked only 13th in the world in terms of the number of COVID-19 related preprints in 2020. Given that Japan ranked 7th in the number of scientific papers published by any country in the same year, something seemed amiss. “The question then arose of whether a dedicated venue where researchers could post their findings in Japanese or English would help speed up the dissemination of research results within the community” she adds. This was felt to be especially important for encouraging researchers working in commercial environments who, unlike their counterparts in academia, are much less likely to create primary research products such as work reports in English….”

Facilitated Preprint Posting is now available for Lab Protocols at PLOS ONE – EveryONE

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“When authors submit a Lab Protocol to PLOS ONE, they prepare a short manuscript that contextualizes their step-by-step protocol, describing the value it adds to the published literature and providing evidence that the protocol works. This additional context helps readers to decide whether and, if so, how to adapt the protocol for their own research.

In 2023, PLOS is making it easier for authors to share these protocol manuscripts as preprints, by expanding our partnership with the preprint server bioRxiv to include Lab Protocols.

During the submission process, Lab Protocol authors will now be asked if they want PLOS to forward their manuscript to bioRxiv to be considered for public posting within a few days. Facilitated posting to bioRxiv has been offered at PLOS ONE since 2018. Extending this service to Lab Protocols means that authors can share and get credit for their methods development work sooner, even as the peer review process unfolds….”

arXiv OSTP memorandum response – arXiv info

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“Funding Agencies can expedite public access to research results through the distribution of electronic preprints of results in open repositories, in particular existing preprint distribution servers such as arXiv,2 bioRxiv,3 and medRxiv.4 Distribution of preprints of research results enables rapid and free accessibility of the findings worldwide, circumventing publication delays of months, or, in some cases, years. Rapid circulation of research results expedites scientific discourse, shortens the cycle of discovery and accelerates the pace of discovery.5

Distribution of research findings by preprints, combined with curation of the archive of submissions, provides universal access for both authors and readers in perpetuity. Authors can provide updated versions of the research, including “as accepted,” with the repositories openly tracking the progress of the revision of results through the scientific process. Public access to the corpus of machine readable research manuscripts provides innovative channels for discovery and additional knowledge generation, including links to the data behind the research, open software tools, and supplemental information provided by authors.

Preprint repositories support a growing and innovative ecosystem for discovery and evaluation of research results, including tools for improved accessibility and research summaries. Experiments in open review and crowdsourced commenting can be layered over preprint repositories, providing constructive feedback and alternative models to the increasingly archaic process of anonymous peer review….”

bioRxiv and medRxiv response to the OSTP memo – an open letter to US funding agencies

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“Agencies can enable free public access to research results simply by mandating that reports of federally funded research are made available as “preprints” on servers such as arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and chemRxiv, before being submitted for journal publication. This will ensure that the findings are freely accessible to anyone anywhere in the world. An important additional benefit is the immediate availability of the information, avoiding the long delays associated with evaluation by traditional scientific journals (typically around one year). Scientific inquiry then progresses faster, as has been particularly evident for COVID research during the pandemic.

Prior access mandates in the US and elsewhere have focused on articles published by academic journals. This complicated the issue by making it a question of how to adapt journal revenue streams and led to the emergence of new models based on article-processing charges (APCs). But APCs simply move the access barrier to authors: they are a significant financial obstacle for researchers in fields and communities that lack the funding to pay them. A preprint mandate would achieve universal access for both authors and readers upstream, ensuring the focus remains on providing access to research findings, rather than on how they are selected and filtered.

Mandating public access to preprints rather than articles in academic journals would also future-proof agencies’ access policies. The distinction between peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed material is blurring as new approaches make peer review an ongoing process rather than a judgment made at a single point in time. Peer review can be conducted independently of journals through initiatives like Review Commons. And traditional journal-based peer review is changing: for example, eLife, supported by several large funders, peer reviews submitted papers but no longer distinguishes accepted from rejected articles. The author’s “accepted” manuscript that is the focus of so-called Green Open Access policies may therefore no longer exist. Because of such ongoing change, mandating the free availability of preprints would be a straightforward and strategically astute policy for US funding agencies.

A preprint mandate would underscore the fundamental, often overlooked, point that it is the results of research to which the public should have access. The evaluation of that research by journals is part of an ongoing process of assessment that can take place after the results have been made openly available. Preprint mandates from the funders of research would also widen the possibilities for evolution within the system and avoid channeling it towards expensive APC-based publishing models. Furthermore, since articles on preprint servers can be accompanied by supplementary data deposits on the servers themselves or linked to data deposited elsewhere, preprint mandates would also provide mechanisms to accomplish the other important OSTP goal: availability of research data.”

The University of Manchester becomes the new home of CrimRxiv – The global open access hub for Criminology · CrimRxiv

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“The University of Manchester is the new home of CrimRxiv, a repository and hub for open access (free) criminology and criminal justice publications. This strengthens UoM’s reputation as a global leader in criminology and in open research. Since its launch in July 2020, CrimRxiv has freely shared over 2,000 publications, with nearly 230,000 views by more than 112,000 readers from 209 countries….”

Lack of sustainability plans for preprint services risks their potential to improve science | Naomi Penfold, March 2nd, 2023 | Impact of Social Sciences

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“…it is critical we explore how to sustain a viable and vibrant ecosystem of preprints infrastructure that is independent of commercial publishers – this is not yet assured. This infrastructure includes servers through which preprints are shared online, as well as tools and services that support the use of preprints. arXiv is a preprint server that is considered essential in several communities in physics, computer science and other quantitative disciplines. Despite successfully building a revenue model that shares the burden between Cornell University, the Simons Foundation and several members and supporters, arXiv’s “funding is still outpaced by [their] growth” – the server hosts over 2 million preprints already and is growing by 10% each year. And while arXiv has been supporting more and more scholars to share and discover preprints, the team behind it has been through significant changes in leadership and is dealing with the urgent need to modernize their 30-year-old technology. As a former Executive Director of arXiv noted, “[arXiv’s success] may not last forever”. Similarly, the recent news that Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has renewed its financial support for the leading preprint servers in biology and medicine, bioRxiv and medRxiv is welcome relief, but this support is temporary, and the team must find a way to continue in the long run. Unfortunately, without greater transparency in the governance of bioRxiv and medRxiv, we do not know if there is anything stopping them from being acquired by a commercial publisher….”

Lack of sustainability plans for preprint services risks their potential to improve science | Naomi Penfold, March 2nd, 2023 | Impact of Social Sciences

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“…it is critical we explore how to sustain a viable and vibrant ecosystem of preprints infrastructure that is independent of commercial publishers – this is not yet assured. This infrastructure includes servers through which preprints are shared online, as well as tools and services that support the use of preprints. arXiv is a preprint server that is considered essential in several communities in physics, computer science and other quantitative disciplines. Despite successfully building a revenue model that shares the burden between Cornell University, the Simons Foundation and several members and supporters, arXiv’s “funding is still outpaced by [their] growth” – the server hosts over 2 million preprints already and is growing by 10% each year. And while arXiv has been supporting more and more scholars to share and discover preprints, the team behind it has been through significant changes in leadership and is dealing with the urgent need to modernize their 30-year-old technology. As a former Executive Director of arXiv noted, “[arXiv’s success] may not last forever”. Similarly, the recent news that Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has renewed its financial support for the leading preprint servers in biology and medicine, bioRxiv and medRxiv is welcome relief, but this support is temporary, and the team must find a way to continue in the long run. Unfortunately, without greater transparency in the governance of bioRxiv and medRxiv, we do not know if there is anything stopping them from being acquired by a commercial publisher….”