Information overload is a common problem. It is not a problem of the Internet age, and it is not specific to scholarly literature, but the growth of preprints in the last five years presents us with a proximal example of the challenge. Preprints are the most visible implementation of the “publish first, filter later” approach. Preprints in some disciplines, including high-energy physics, astrophysics, mathematics, and computer science, increasingly became the norm in the last 25 years, and currently the majority of high-energy physics papers are first published as preprints on the arXiv. While preprints in general, and specifically in the life sciences, are lowering the cost of and delays to sharing information, filtering for relevant content is still at a relatively early stage.
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