Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory offers a free pre-print server for the biology field (http://biorxiv.org/), similar to arXiv.org which is a pre-print server for manuscripts in the area of physics, mathematics, etc.
Would you consider to submit your draft manuscript to bioRxiv? Do you think this would be beneficial for the quality of your work? Which factors would influence your decision?
I'd love to hear your opinion!
It's long overdue and am sure glad to have this 'publication' avenue available (although arxiv does have a quantitative biology section). What's puzzling to me is why biorxiv contributions are not easily detected by various search engines, including researchgate.net, while arxiv ones are.
It's long overdue and am sure glad to have this 'publication' avenue available (although arxiv does have a quantitative biology section). What's puzzling to me is why biorxiv contributions are not easily detected by various search engines, including researchgate.net, while arxiv ones are.
I have just uploaded a paper to it last week as a test. So far so good....
http://bit.ly/GIM-motif
It is a good idea to use repositories such as Biorxiv to get your works out fast, while at the same time you submit your manuscript to a peer reviewed journal. This way, you can provide time-sensitive analysis to the public while making sure your work meets the scientific standards your field of study sets.
Hi,
I just posted an answer to a similar question, which might be relevant here as well:
"I have been asking myself the same question recently, so my considerations may be useful.
Here’s a list of some possible advantages and disadvantages I came up with.
Advantages:
- Your work is shared (much) sooner than it would otherwise be. This allows science in your field to proceed faster because others can see your work and can use it to inform their own research, grant applications, study questions, etc. An additional advantage for yourself and your research community is that it is easier for other people to be aware of you and what work you are currently involved with.
- The manuscript deposited on bioRxiv gets a doi, which means it can be cited and the work is permanently registered. In competitive fields this means that you can show precedence. From a personal CV standpoint, you may gain citations that you would otherwise never have.
- As soon as the manuscript is published in a peer-reviewed journal, a link appears on the bioRxiv website, so people can find the peer-reviewed version of the article.
Disadvantages:
- The manuscript has not yet been peer-reviewed, which means that errors that would have been filtered out through peer review can remain in the manuscript. On the other hand, peer review is anything but perfect, and one should always be critical when reading an article, whether or not it has been peer-reviewed.
- It may be possible that readers who have downloaded the pre-print to their reference library keep using this version even after the peer-reviewed manuscript has been published. This could then result in citations of the preprint instead of the published article, and lower the number of citations of the published version. This problem seems minor though, for two reasons: 1) People are aware that this is a pre-print, which means that most will be likely to search for a new version when citing the paper. 2) These “missed” citations still go to your own work and your own CV.
Many journals, incl. high-profile journals such as eLife, PNAS, or PLOS, actively encourage online archiving of pre-prints.
Personally I have become enthusiastic about archiving pre-prints, and encourage my colleagues to do the same, but would love to hear of any downsides I have not yet considered."
Many thanks for your interesting and informative contribution to the discussion, Benny!
Cheers, Christian
Update: Interesting article regarding the increasing importance of pre-prints in the life sciences http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/are-preprints-future-biology-survival-guide-scientists
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