Preprint

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A preprint is a draft of a scientific paper that has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Contents 1 Use of Preprints 2 arXiv 3 Computer preprints 4 Online sources of preprints 5 External links 6 References 7 See also

[edit] Use of Preprints

As peer review can take quite some time—typical publication delay can range from a few weeks to several months and sometimes exceeds a year—preprints have long been circulated among academic institutions in order to communicate current results within a scientific community. The pre-publication distribution of scientific articles also allows more immediate feedback to the authors, which can be taken into account when revising the article for journal publication.

Since 1991, preprints have increasingly been made public on the internet in lieu of circulating paper copies to academic institutions by mail, due to the rise of central preprint archives such as arXiv.org and institutional archives (or repositories).

The term e-print, or eprint, is frequently used for preprints or postprints that are available electronically. The term was coined by analogy with pre-print (a pre-publication printed version of an article, etc), post-print (a printed version of an article made available to others after publication) and reprint (a post-print printed by the journal publisher and provided to the author).

Unless they turn into peer-reviewed publications, preprints are usually not taken into account when making hiring or promotion decisions in academia.

[edit] arXiv

The e-print archive arXiv.org was created by Paul Ginsparg in 1991 at Los Alamos National Laboratory for theoretical high-energy physics preprints. In 2001, arXiv.org moved to Cornell University and now encompasses the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, and quantitative biology. In high-energy physics in particular, the posting of preprints on arXiv before publication has become ubiquitous; to the extent that some journals accept submissions of papers through the specification of their arXiv e-print number.

In some branches of physics, arXiv has more importance as a medium of communication than standard journals: it is considered one of the driving forces behind the currently ongoing trend against commercially published scientific journals—see article for details about this controversy. Indeed, in 1992, David Mermin facetiously described Ginsparg's creation as potentially "string theory's greatest contribution to science"^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Computer preprints

The preprint culture was also very prominent in computer science, and this resulted in a different slant on dissemination of scientific research (see Citeseer). The open access movement has tended to focus on distributed institutional collections of research, global harvesting, and aggregation through search engines and gateways such as OAIster, rather than a global discipline base such as arXiv. E-prints can now refer to any electronic form of a scholarly or scientific publication, including journal articles, conference papers, research theses or dissertations; sometimes the term is used as a generic description of scholarly or scientific research output, because these are usually to be found in merged (generic) collections, called open access repositories, or eprints archives.

[edit] Online sources of preprints

• Citeseer
• Cogprints
• Cryptology ePrint Archive
• arxiv.org
• OAIster
• ScientificCommons

[edit] External links

• ScientificCommons.org
• arXiv.org e-print archive
• Registry of Open Access repositories (ROAR)

[edit] References

• Eysenbach G. The impact of preprint servers and electronic publishing on biomedical research. Curr Opin Immunol. 2000 Oct;12(5):499-503 PDF
• Eysenbach G. Challenges and changing roles for medical journals in the cyberspace age: Electronic pre-prints and e-papers. J Med Internet Res 1999;1(2):e9 Full text

[edit] See also

• Open access
• Electronic Preprints and Postprints, in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Marcel Dekker.