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 November 2024, the submission rate is about 24,000 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.
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined, or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright, which regulates post-publication uses of the work.
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences, among others. Elsevier bought SSRN from Social Science Electronic Publishing Inc. in May 2016. It is not an electronic journal, but rather an electronic library and search engine.
An institutional repository (IR) is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published works to increase their visibility and collaboration with other academics. However, most of these outputs produced by universities are not effectively accessed and shared by researchers and other stakeholders. As a result academics should be involved in the implementation and development of an IR project so that they can learn the benefits and purpose of building an IR.
Self-archiving is the act of depositing a free copy of an electronic document online in order to provide open access to it. The term usually refers to the self-archiving of peer-reviewed research journal and conference articles, as well as theses and book chapters, deposited in the author's own institutional repository or open archive for the purpose of maximizing its accessibility, usage and citation impact. The term green open access has become common in recent years, distinguishing this approach from gold open access, where the journal itself makes the articles publicly available without charge to the reader.
Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles, and software components. The project started in 1997. Its precursor NetEc dates back to 1993.
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.
Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) is a predatory academic publisher of open-access electronic journals, conference proceedings, and scientific anthologies that are considered to be of questionable quality. As of December 2014, it offered 244 English-language open-access journals in the areas of science, technology, business, economy, and medicine.
This is a summary of the different copyright policies of academic publishers for books, book chapters, and journal articles.
Authorea is an online collaborative writing tool that allows researchers to write, cite, collaborate, host data and publish. It has been described as "Google Docs for Scientists". It has been owned by the commercial publishing company Wiley through Atypon since 2018.
ScienceOpen is a web-based platform, that hosts open access journals. It is freely accessible for readers, authors and publishers, and it generates its revenues via promotional services for publishers and authors' institutions. The organization is based in Berlin and has a technical office in Boston. It is a member of CrossRef, ORCID, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, STM Association and the Directory of Open Access Journals. The company was designated as one of “10 to Watch” by research advisory firm Outsell in its report “Open Access 2015: Market Size, Share, Forecast, and Trends.”
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, the 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 2011, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) began requiring that its grantees provide open access to funded research, the Open Access India forum formulated a draft policy on Open Access for India. The Shodhganga, a digital repository for theses, was also 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.
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.
Rapid Reviews: Infectious Diseases, also known as RR\ID and formerly known as Rapid Reviews: COVID-19, or RR:C19, is an open access interdisciplinary medical journal published by the MIT Press. It publishes peer reviews and editorials of timely, publicly-posted preprints relevant to all aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The journal was established in June 2020 with Stefano Bertozzi as editor-in-chief.
Preprints.org is an open-access platform of electronic preprints approved for posting after moderation. Research in various areas can be posted as preprints on Preprints.org, including manuscripts from all fields of research.
