Since 1991 preprint versions of research papers have been shared online.
Publication of research manuscripts in a peer reviewed journal often takes weeks, months, and sometimes years. The need to to quickly distribute results within a scholarly community led researchers to distribute preprints. Preprints are manuscripts that have not yet been peer reviewed, and the early distribution allows authors to receive feedback from their peers.
Some of the larger preprint repositories:
- OSF Preprints - multidisciplinary service run by the Centre for Open Science.
- arXiv.org - run by Cornell University. Main focus is mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, quantitative finance and economics.
- SSRN - multidisciplinary and aggregates over 30 preprint servers (Preprints with The Lancet, Cell Sneak Peek, etc.) from more than 55 disciplines
- Zenodo - multidisciplinary repository run by OpenAIRE / CERN
- See more...