Preprints, like journal articles, are considered public disclosures, which can affect a patent application. Therefore, if you intend to file an application to patent work disclosed in your paper, discuss the situation with your technology transfer office before preprinting.
Before preprinting, we suggest completing the following steps: Double check journal policies on when and where preprints may be posted. Choose a preprint server. Consider visibility, funder recommendations, and features like preservation and indexing, which are cataloged in the Preprint Server Directory. Choose a license. Get all authors on board with preprinting. Refer to the…
Prepare your manuscript as carefully as you would for a journal submission, if not more so. In bioRxiv, all versions submitted are retained and can be viewed. Unlike a journal submission, which will be seen by only two or three anonymous peer reviewers, your posted preprint is public and the scientific community will be able…
Posting on multiple preprint servers can cause challenges both for authors and readers. Authors may find it difficult to keep all versions updated, and it can cause citations and other usage metrics to be split between multiple copies, making it harder to track downstream impacts of the work. Indexing services and search tools may also…
Many journals that publish biological research allow preprint submissions. To get a sense for preprint policies, you can check SHERPA/RoMEO, Transpose, or Wikipedia’s List of academic journals by preprint policy. However, before submitting a manuscript, always check the journal’s website for recent changes or any nuances of their policy.
You can refer to the Licensing FAQ and discuss these options with your co-authors before beginning the submission process. Note that the NIH has encouraged the use of CC BY licenses, and we are not aware of any journals preventing the posting of preprints with a Creative Commons license. You can see which licenses are…
In most cases, they are the same in content. However, the preprint could offer more freedom in terms of format. For example, the short communication format of many journals has strict guidelines for length, formatting and often has only a paragraph of introduction and conclusion. However, in a preprint, you could extend the introduction, conclusion…
This is your decision and depends on when you have complete scientific work ready to share. In many cases, where the manuscript will be sent to journals as well, preprints are submitted close to the time of journal submission. Several journals have enabled one-click manuscript transfer from bioRxiv. Some scientists may want to post a…
A preprint should fairly and completely disclose the data and methods that are necessary to evaluate and replicate the work, just as in a journal publication. If properly performed, then authors should also receive credit and be properly cited for their discovery. As with the formatting question above, a more complete description will help a…
This is a grey area and one that might change over time. Currently, authors may benefit from sharing reagents, code, and data after a preprint posting but are not required to do so, in contrast with most journal publications. Sharing ahead of publication may seed new collaborations, accelerate discovery, and also enhance the group’s reputation…
With preprints, it is simple to co-submit and have work from different groups appear at the same time. In contrast, a journal may not want both papers or one paper may be delayed to referee requests.
Most preprint servers allow new versions of the manuscript to be uploaded. Thus, you can update your paper based upon new experiments or input received from the community or through a journal-based peer review process, unless specified otherwise by the journal. For example, on bioRxiv it is quite easy to tell when a new version…
In order for preprints to be considered permanent research objects that are able to be cited and used to demonstrate productivity for grants or job applications, readers must be able to cite them without fear that they will spontaneously become unavailable. Therefore, removal of preprint files is typically reserved for cases where there are significant…
Many scientists are working in the same area, and papers from two or more groups that appear within a short period of time are usually recognized as having been performed independently. The advantage of a preprint is that you can post your work without any delay and therefore close to the publication date of the…
ASAPbio receives many inquiries regarding preprints and “scooping.” As jobs and grants become very competitive, there is increasing worry among biologists about scooping, ie that their ideas/results will be published by others and that they will not receive proper attribution. Here we try to break down the issue of scooping into specific scenarios and points…
Since arXiv has a long track record and experience, we asked the following question to Paul Ginsparg, physicist and founder of the preprint server arXiv: “Many biologists worry that they will get “scooped” if they place their work on a preprint server. How common is it for someone to see a study posted on arXiv…
This happens to every scientist at some point. We look at PubMed or examine the latest table of contents in Journal X and find a similar study. Often, there is no bad intention, just different labs in a similar field converging on the same topic. Naturally, this scenario can be very dispiriting to the student…
This is an ideal and not infrequent situation where two groups become aware of similar work and wish to “co-disclose” or “co-publish” together to obtain a similar time stamp. Preprints: This situation is very easy to navigate with preprints, since the disclosure is under the control of the scientists. The groups simply have to agree…
Let us imagine a scenario in which two groups with similar discoveries backed by similar quality of data submit to two separate journals at the same time. For one group, the journal sends out the work for review, the reviews are favorable, and the work is published quickly. However, the other group is less fortunate…
Many physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists use arXiv and as Paul Ginsparg articulates in his comments about scooping, it is not plausible to claim that “I never saw it.” Preprints are undergoing a transition in some fields of biology where the numbers are still small and many scientists do not know about them. This situation…