arXiv is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, mathematical finance and economics, which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Some publishers also grant permission for authors to archive the peer-reviewed postprint. Begun on August 14, 1991, arXiv.org passed the half-million-article milestone on October 3, 2008, had hit a million by the end of 2014 and two million by the end of 2021. As of April 2021, the submission rate is about 16,000 articles per month.
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version available free, before or after a paper is published in a journal.
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.
James Edgar Till is a University of Toronto biophysicist, best known for demonstrating – with Ernest McCulloch – the existence of stem cells.
Citation impact or citation rate is a measure of how many times an academic journal article or book or author is cited by other articles, books or authors. Citation counts are interpreted as measures of the impact or influence of academic work and have given rise to the field of bibliometrics or scientometrics, specializing in the study of patterns of academic impact through citation analysis. The importance of journals can be measured by the average citation rate, the ratio of number of citations to number articles published within a given time period and in a given index, such as the journal impact factor or the citescore. It is used by academic institutions in decisions about academic tenure, promotion and hiring, and hence also used by authors in deciding which journal to publish in. Citation-like measures are also used in other fields that do ranking, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, software metrics, college and university rankings, and business performance indicators.
Open science is the movement to make scientific research and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks. It encompasses practices such as publishing open research, campaigning for open access, encouraging scientists to practice open-notebook science, broader dissemination and engagement in science and generally making it easier to publish, access and communicate scientific knowledge.
Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are:
- Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's identity.
- Open reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article.
- Open participation: The wider community are able to contribute to the review process.
In scientific publishing, the 1969 Ingelfinger rule originally stipulated that The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) would not publish findings that had been published elsewhere, in other media or in other journals. The rule was subsequently adopted by several other scientific journals, and has shaped scientific publishing ever since. Historically it has also helped to ensure that the journal's content is fresh and does not duplicate content previously reported elsewhere, and seeks to protect the scientific embargo system.
viXra is an electronic e-print archive known for unorthodox and fringe science. It was set up by independent physicist Philip Gibbs as an alternative to the dominant arXiv service operated by Cornell University. Its name comes from arXiv spelled backwards.
PeerJ is an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. It is published by a company of the same name that was co-founded by CEO Jason Hoyt and publisher Peter Binfield, with initial financial backing of US$950,000 from O'Reilly Media's O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and later funding from Sage Publishing.
bioRxiv is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
In India, Open Access movement started in May 2004, when two workshops were organized by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. In 2006, the National Knowledge Commission in its recommendations proposed that "access to knowledge is the most fundamental way of increasing the opportunities and reach of individuals and groups". In 2009, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) began requiring that its grantees provide open access to funded research. In 2011, the Open Access India forum formulated a draft policy on Open Access for India. Shodhganga, a digital repository for theses, was established in 2011 with the aim of promoting and preserving academic research. The University Grants Commission (UGC) made it mandatory for scholars to deposit their theses in Shodhganga, as per the Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M. Phil./Ph.D. Degrees Regulations, 2016.Currently, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists 326 open access journals published in India, of which 233 have no fees.
The idea and practise of providing free online access to journal articles began at least a decade before the term "open access" was formally coined. Computer scientists had been self-archiving in anonymous ftp archives since the 1970s and physicists had been self-archiving in arXiv since the 1990s. The Subversive Proposal to generalize the practice was posted in 1994.
EarthArXiv is both a preprint server and a volunteer community devoted to open scholarly communication. As a preprint server, EarthArXiv publishes articles from all subdomains of Earth Science and related domains of planetary science. These publications are versions of scholarly papers that precede publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals. EarthArXiv is not itself a journal and does not evaluate the scientific quality of a paper. Instead, EarthArXiv serves as a platform for free hosting and rapid dissemination of scientific results. The EarthArXiv platform assigns each submission a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), therefore assigning provenance and making it citable in other scholarly works. EarthArXiv's mission is to promote open access, share open access and preprint resources, and participate in shared governance of the preprint server and its policies. EarthArXiv was launched on October 23, 2017.
Jessica Polka is a biochemist and the Executive Director of ASAPbio, a non-profit initiative promoting innovation and transparency via preprints and open peer review. She was one of the organizers of a recent meeting they held on scholarly communication.
ChemRxiv is an open access preprint archive for chemistry. It is operated by the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry and German Chemical Society. The new preprint server was announced already in 2016, but was only opened online in 2017. Initially, editors of ACS journals were skeptical and only 80% of the editors allowed submissions to be uploaded to the preprint server in 2017. In 2019 the Chinese Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of Japan joined as co-owners of the preprint server.
medRxiv is an Internet site distributing unpublished eprints about health sciences. It distributes complete but unpublished manuscripts in the areas of medicine, clinical research, and related health sciences without charge to the reader. Such manuscripts have yet to undergo peer review and the site notes that preliminary status and that the manuscripts should not be considered for clinical application, nor relied upon for news reporting as established information.
AfricArXiv is an open-access repository for preprints of academic publications which are either about Africa or by African scientists. The platform was established in 2018. It was established to make preprint servers more available in various fields and regions. Its establishment happen during trends to provide more digital services to support science in Africa.
