You can now publish your preprint directly to ScienceOpen. The discovery platform ScienceOpen will put your work in context and open it up to review with a wide range of author-mediated peer review tools.

Preprints, or first draft research manuscripts, have existed almost as long as the Internet. Scientists have been taking advantage of online communication to speed up research for over 3 decades. ScienceOpen understands the importance of allowing researchers to openly share their results with the scientific community at an early stage in their research. The advantage for researchers is that they get early feedback from peers but can still publish the final version in most peer-reviewed journals of their choosing.

To support researchers in fully utilizing the benefits of preprint publishing, ScienceOpen is pleased to support open and free preprint publishing on our platform!

With this service, anyone can now upload, publish, and promote their preprint using a free and simple interface with access to a full suite of tools for peer review, constructive discussion through comments, and usage and impact tracking.

ScienceOpen’s journey hosting preprints

We have supported the essential role of preprints in speeding up science from the beginning by integrating arXiv preprints on the platform. Records for over 27,000 bioRxiv preprints in our discovery environment followed suit, along with the capacity to add records from other preprint servers such as Preprints.org, PeerJ Preprints, ChemRxiv, and Open Science Framework repositories. Given our belief in the benefits of preprints in advancing science, it seemed only logical to develop a new feature that will enable all researchers to take advantage of preprints in scholarly research and communications.

Since then, our preprint content has exponentially grown, and as of 2023 we currently host over 2.5 million preprints from every major repository and discipline.

How can you publish a preprint on ScienceOpen?

Click on the “submit a manuscript” button on our ScienceOpen Preprints collection page. The simple upload form allows you to link your ORCID ID, add co-authors, declare funding, link to datasets, and more.

When you hit “submit”, your preprint will undergo an editorial review to check for completeness and basic scholarly integrity, and will then be published on ScienceOpen with a Crossref DOI, a CC BY 4.0 attribution license, and a preprint flag. It is now open for commenting and review.

What can you do with preprints on ScienceOpen?

ScienceOpen has a preprint filter integrated into our search engine, technologically supporting the scholarly community and the role of preprints in research. Through this filter, you can easily discover preprints among our 88+ million records.

To find the preprints you need, simply click the ‘preprint’ box after selecting the filter to restrict your search to them. Preprints can then be sorted by:

• Altmetrics
• Average rating
• Citations
• Date of publication
• View count
• Relevance

You can bookmark your favorite preprints, add comments, share to social media, recommend them to your peers, and cite. You can export your search results up to 200 citations at a time in EndNote, BibTex, and Reference Manager (RIS) formats for easy integration with other reference management systems.

ScienceOpen offers a full suite of tools to peer review and curate preprints. Article reviews, after the model of book reviews, are published with the author’s ORCID and a Crossref DOI for a high level of discoverability. Any user on ScienceOpen can invite another researcher to formally review any preprint. Currently, researchers need to have five publications linked to their ORCID for peer review.

Futhermore, ScienceOpen Collections allows editors to add preprints to their collection. These preprints can later be exchanged for a fully published article. Adding preprints diversifies the available research on the topic of the collection. Editors can also easily add a missing preprint from our platform by uploading the DOI via the “Request article” function on the user dashboard. Preprint authors are welcome to add a lay summary, thumbnail image, keywords, and disciplines to increase the discoverability of their research within the ScienceOpen environment and the wider scholarly community.

Where to publish a preprint?

ScienceOpen currently features hundreds of collections, and below we are highlighting a few of our preprint-exclusive collections where you can publish your manuscript as a preprint or find articles to review.

• ScienceOpen Preprints – featuring submissions across various disciplines. Use our smart search and filter tools to find articles relevant to your field of expertise!
• UCL Open: Environment Preprint – is a new, open, and transparent open access journal where high-impact disciplinary and interdisciplinary research is published that showcases radical and critical thinking on real-world issues, with the overall aim of benefiting humanity. Explore new preprints related to all the disciplines linked to the environment and start reviewing today!
• UnisaRxiv – is designed to provide a platform that allows for rapid dissemination of the latest findings in diverse topics and to promote submissions from any grade of researcher at the University of South Africa and beyond. Researchers at all career stages, including early career researchers, professionals, and senior scholars are invited to submit and review the high-quality research manuscripts featured on the collection.
• AfricArXiv Preprints – is dedicated to speeding up and opening up research and collaboration for African scientists and helping to design the future of scholarly communication globally. With many disciplines covered, researchers can get quick access to hundreds of preprints ready to be reviewed.
• Journal of Systems Thinking Preprints – is the first and only open-access post-publication peer-reviewed (PPPR) journal dedicated to scientific research in the areas of Systems Thinking (cognitive complexity), Systems Mapping (visual complexity), Systems Leadership (organizational complexity), and Systems Science (ontological complexity).

Starting your own topical preprint repository or overlay journal has never been easier!

As you can see, there are many benefits to publishing and including preprints in the ongoing research. Publish your preprint at ScienceOpen today and let us know what you think about our new feature!