DESCRIPTION

A preprint is an article that has not yet undergone peer review but which has been uploaded to an open access preprint server to enable early dissemination and/or feedback from peers prior to formal publication with a journal. A number of discipline-specific preprint servers for AHSS subjects are hosted on the Open Science Framework (OSF). These include SocArXiv (social sciences); BodoArXiv (Medieval studies), EdArXiv (education), Law Archive (legal scholarship) and MediArXiv (media, film and communication). Other AHSS discipline-specific repositories that host preprints include PhilArchive (philosophy) and E-LIS (library and information science). Preprints can also be uploaded to multidisciplinary preprint servers and repositories such as SSRN, HAL Open Science or preprints.org. Ideally, a preprint server will assign a DOI to the preprint and allow versioning (i.e. uploading and differentiation of revised versions of the preprint) as well as linking to the version of record (the final version of the article) after it has been peer-reviewed and published in a journal. Authors uploading preprints should check the policy of the journal they plan to submit to in order to ensure preprinted articles are accepted.

Preprint review platforms offer independent review services for preprints, either to support journal submission and publication or to accredit the preprint without the need for formal publication, as in the case of the 'Peer Community In' initiative, which has an instance for archaeology. Following review as part of PCI, an article can also subsequently be submitted to a traditional journal if the author chooses. Queffelec et al. (2023, 127) note that '[m]ost journals accept submission of preprints, and some journals are specifically PCI Friendly.' Preprint review platforms can be considered examples of a 'Publish Review Curate' approach to scholarly communication, in which articles are immediately published openly before being subjected to (usually open) peer review; other instances of this model include the F1000Research platform, which offers an integrated workflow for the development of preprints into accredited, peer-reviewed articles via open peer review.

A working paper, likewise, is an article that has not yet undergone peer review; like a preprint, it may be an initial version of an article, or may present more preliminary findings with the aim of highlighting work in progress, stimulating discussion and feedback, or establishing precedence. While AHSS disciplines do not have the long history of preprinting evident in such STEM subjects as physics, computer science and mathematics (Cohen, 2017; Laporte, 2017; Narock & Goldstein, 2019, 1), a strong tradition of openly sharing working papers exists in the field of economics in particular, via such infrastructure as RePEc, which offers a means of discovering and accessing 'over 1 million working papers released across over 5300 working paper series' (Lusher et al., 2023, 1). As Baumann and Wolhrabe (2020, 2435) note, '[m]any working papers series [in Economics] are associated with an organisation, faculty or a university often indicated by the name of the series', with publication limited to members of that organisation, although series such as the Munich Personal Archive (https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/) are open to submissions from any author. More broadly, working papers may also be shared via a dedicated open access journal such as MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, a venue specifically aimed at supporting researchers to share initial findings.

The benefits of both preprints and working papers include speeding up the communication of research (Balaji & Dhanamjaya, 2019, 18), something that is especially beneficial in economics given the unusually long time from submission to acceptance in economics journals (Lusher et al., 2023, 1); benefitting early career researchers by 'allow[ing] them to rapidly achieve "visibility" and demonstrate productivity in job and grant applications' (Chiarelli et al., 2019, 5), enabling informal peer feedback and discussion (Narock & Goldstein, 2019, 2); providing an outlet for heterodox research that may be harder to publish in major journals (Novarese & Zimmermann, 2008, 199); and enabling authors to establish precedence (Wohlrabe and Bürgi, 2021a, 1531). Drawbacks include concerns about 'scooping' - though these may be misplaced given the benefit of establishing precedence noted above - together with quality concerns: namely, the fact that '[a]s there is no formal peer review before preprints or working papers become available online, they can potentially include errors, key omissions, flaws or caveats' (Wohlrabe & Bürgi, 2021b, 4702).

References

Balaji, B. and Dhanamjaya, M. (2019). 'Preprints in Scholarly Communication: Re-Imagining Metrics and Infrastructures', Publications (Basel), 7(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7010006

Baumann, A. and Wohlrabe, K. (2020). 'Where Have All the Working Papers Gone? Evidence from Four Major Economics Working Paper Series', Scientometrics, 124(3), 2433–2441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03570-x

Chiarelli, A. et al. (2019). 'Preprints and Scholarly Communication: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of Adoption, Practices, Drivers and Barriers', F1000 Research, 8, 971. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.19619.2

Cohen, P.N. (2017). 'SocArxiv Promotes Open Sociology', Contexts (Berkeley, Calif.), 16(1), 6–6. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26370461

Laporte, S. (2017). 'Preprint for the Humanities – Fiction or a Real Possibility?', Studia Historiae Scientiarum, 16, 367–378. https://doi.org/10.4467/2543702XSHS.17.014.7715

Lusher, L., et al. (2023). 'Congestion on the Information Superhighway: Inefficiencies in Economics Working Papers', Journal of Public Economics, 225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104978

Narock, T. and Goldstein, E.B. (2019). 'Quantifying the Growth of Preprint Services Hosted by the Center for Open Science', Publications (Basel), 7(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020044

Novarese, M. and Zimmermann, C. (2008). 'Heterodox Economics and Dissemination of Research through the Internet: The Experience of RePEc and NEP', On the Horizon, 16(4), 198–204. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120810912529

Queffelec, A. et al. (2023). 'Peer Community in Archaeology: A Community-driven Free and Transparent System for Preprints Peer-reviewing', Archeologia e Calcolatori, 34(1), 125–134. https://doi.org/10.19282/ac.34.1.2023.14

Wohlrabe, K. and Bürgi, C. (2021a). 'Do Working Papers increase Journal Citations? Evidence from the Top 5 Journals in Economics', Applied Economics Letters, 28(17), 1531–1535. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2020.1855303

Wohlrabe, K. and Bürgi, C. (2021b). 'What Is the Benefit from Publishing a Working Paper in a Journal in Terms of Citations? Evidence from Economics', Scientometrics, 126(6), 4701–4714. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03942-x