by Carmel McNamara, IOS Press, Amsterdam, NL

Authors who submit to IOS Press journals can also post their work as preprints in online repositories. A number of journals facilitate this process following the principles of open science, for instance Data Science ensures that all submitted papers are made available as preprints before the reviewing starts – which uses digital infrastructure and workflow technologies developed by IOS Press (more on that story in a future blog post) – while StemJournal encourages the posting of public preprints prior to submission, with further preprint options made available on its website via the StemRxiv portal. This gives researchers options to submit and search preprints, using a new feature developed for our Drupal-based websites. 

StemJournal is an open access forum for stem cell research and, earlier this year, a new feature was launched on its website in the form of StemRxiv (pronounced “stem archive”), which is all about preprints. It is a portal that provides researchers with the options to search and submit preprints across all areas of stem cell research.

Let’s backtrack a moment in case anyone is thinking: “preprints… say what?” A preprint is a version of a scientific manuscript that is uploaded by the authors to a public server, which can receive informal feedback that the authors can decide to act on when revising their manuscripts before formally submitting to a journal (or not). Preprints are normally given a digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be cited in the scientific literature and they bring with them many benefits from the authors’ perspective, including raising their profile, widening reach, establishing a record of priority and attribution of credit, gaining visibility, etc. They are also a record of a manuscript’s journey and give the possibility to be transparent and openly share work. If you have any questions about preprints, maybe you’ll find the answer here.