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Hello preprints, what’s your story?

Jennifer Lin – 2016 June 23

In Content RegistrationPreprints

The role of preprints

Crossref provides infrastructure services and therefore we support scholarly communications as it evolves over time. Today, preprints are increasingly discussed as a valuable part of the research story (beyond physics, math, and a small set of sub-disciplines). Preprints might play a positive role in catalyzing research discovery, establishing priority of discoveries and ideas, facilitating career advancement, and improving the culture of communication within the scholarly community.

As we shared in an earlier blog post last month, members will be able to register Crossref DOIs for preprints later this year. We will connect the full history of a research work, and ensure the citation record is clear and up-to-date. As we build out this new record/resource type, we’d love to hear how the research community envisions what preprints will do.

What’s your story, preprint?

So we can develop a service that supports the whole host of potential uses for all stakeholders, we ask the entire research community to contribute preprints user stories . User stories are concrete descriptions of a specific need, typically used in technology development: As a [x], I want to [y] to that I can [z]. User stories take the “end-user’s” perspective as they focus on a discrete result and its value. They are essential when implementing solutions that must meet a wide range of needs, across a diverse set of constituents. For example:

As an author, I want to share results before my paper is submitted to a journal so that I can get rapid feedback on it and make improvements before publication.

As a researcher who is part of a tenure and promotion committee or funder review panel, I want to know the reach of early results published from the candidate so that I can more quickly track the impact of results, rather than relying only on journal articles that take much longer to publish.

As a journal publisher, I want to know whether a preprint exists for a manuscript submitted to me so that I can decide whether I will accept the submission based on my editorial policy.

We aim to assemble a full catalog that cuts across research disciplines and stakeholder groups. We want to hear from you: researchers, publishers, funding agencies, scholarly societies, academic institutions, technology providers, other infrastructure providers , etc .

Tell us your story here

To ensure that your needs are included, please send us your user stories via this user story “deposit” form . They will be added to the full registry of contributions from the community, which we hope will serve as a key resource for all those developing preprints into a core part of scholarly communications (e.g., ASAPbio, etc.).