Earth Science is Ready for Preprints

Narock, Tom; Goldstein, Evan B.; Jackson, Christopher A.-L.; Bubeck, Alodie A.; Enright, Allison M. L.; Farquharson, Jamie I.; Fernández, Alfonso; Fernández-Blanco, David; Girardclos, Stéphanie; Ibarra, Daniel E.; Lengger, Sabine K.; Mackay, Anson; Venema, Victor; Whitehead, Brandon; Ampuero, Jean-Paul

doi:10.1029/2019EO121347

Published April 23, 2019 | Version Submitted + Published

Journal Article Open

Earth Science is Ready for Preprints

For years, publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal has served as the official announcement that a piece of research has entered the accepted body of scientific knowledge. However, chances are good that the data, method innovations, and preliminary conclusions contained in a scientific paper have been circulating among the researchers' colleagues for a year or more before the paper is officially published. By the time a journal issue goes to the printing press, the research may have made significant progress beyond what the published papers document. Preprints—published, non-peer-reviewed scholarly papers that often precede publication in a peer-reviewed journal—have been a part of science since at least the 1960s [Cobb, 2017]. ArXiv, arguably the most prominent preprint system, has served the physics, mathematics, and computer science communities for more than 25 years.

Additional Information

© 2019 The authors. CC BY 3.0. 30 April 2019: This article was corrected to reflect the number of DOIs cross-checked by the authors and the percentage appearing in open-access journals. We thank the EarthArXiv community, particularly Earth Science Information Partners, for help in organizing and founding EarthArXiv and the Center for Open Science for hosting EarthArXiv. We also thank our international group of community ambassadors who advocate for open science and have provided valuable feedback on this article.

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Published - Earth_Science_Is_Ready_for_Preprints_-_Eos.pdf

Submitted - EarthArXiv_first_year_v1_preprint.pdf

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