Pre-prints: a more affordable and quicker way to share research results

The growing availability of a wide range of subject-based pre-print servers such as bioRxiv and ChemRxiv is driving the research funders' and institutions' policies towards promoting the deposit of early versions of research works in such platforms. This trend has only been reinforced by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has reassured these key stakeholders that this is the right way forward in the domain of scholarly communications. Pre-prints not only allow a much earlier dissemination of research results, but they do not prevent the publication of the work in a well-respected journal following the standard peer-review process and they critically ensure the open availability of these usually publicly-funded research results at a very early stage.

The talk will examine the workflows associated to pre-print deposit and later publication in a journal, the associated usage stats and citation advantages offered by these pre-print servers, the policies issued by specific research funders regarding pre-prints and the permissions offered by publishers for posting early, still unreviewed versions of a research work. A prominent Strathclyde researcher who regularly posts pre-prints on these servers will feature alongside the Open Access Advocacy Librarian to discuss these topics.