This week, six communities launched preprint services to accelerate dissemination of research. These include INA-Rxiv, the preprint server of Indonesia; LISSA, an open scholarly platform for library and information science; MindRxiv, a service for research on mind and contemplative practices; NutriXiv, a preprint service for the nutritional sciences; paleorXiv, a digital archive for Paleontology; and SportRxiv, an open archive for sport and exercise-related research.
Preprints are research papers shared prior to undergoing peer review, and are transforming the scholarly communication landscape. By sharing preprints, researchers can dramatically accelerate dissemination of and feedback for their research findings. Sharing preprints are the norm in some disciplines like physics, and are now emerging rapidly across other disciplines.
These new services join AgriXiv (agriculture), BITSS (research methodology), engrXiv (Engineering), LawArXiv (law), PsyArXiv (psychology), SocArXiv (social sciences), Thesis Commons (theses and dissertations), and OSF Preprints (any discipline) in using the free, open-source Open Science Framework (OSF). A shared infrastructure for operating preprint services fosters economy of scale and a community approach to creating and managing infrastructure. Launched just a year ago, there are now 14 preprint services and already more than 3,600 hosted preprints. The OSF is maintained by the Center for Open Science (COS), a non-profit technology and culture change organisation with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research.
The operators of these 14 preprint services illustrate the global growth and diversity of stakeholders invested in accelerating research. Some of the services are operated by scientific societies (e.g., PsyArXiv), research funders (e.g., MindRxiv), libraries and library societies (e.g., LawArXiv), and grassroots communities of researchers (e.g., SportRxiv, NutriXiv). All groups are increasing the accessibility and impact of the research done in their community.
The preprint communities also provide a diversity of use cases that help prioritise features that will enhance the functionality of all preprint services.
In addition to hosting preprint services, OSF uses SHARE to aggregate and index over two million search results from preprint providers hosted on other platforms such as arXiv, bioRXiv, and PeerJ. These preprints can be accessed by selecting a subject of interest, entering specific search terms, or browsing the preprints most recently added to the service.
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