Journal policies on preprint servers
June 21st, 2007Continuing the theme of open science, I think one of the most important issues that needs clarification is the position of journals to making your research available prior to publication. One example of this is preprint servers, of which Nature has recently launched their own. Coincidently, a year ago today, Pedro discussed this issue on his blog. With the aim of including it in the next issue of the bio::blogs special edition, I repeated Pedro’s search - the results were consistent with his, except for two cases.
Molecular Systems Biology
In Pedro’s search, MSB’s position was
“[...] Molecular Systems Biology reserves the right not to publish material that has already been pre-published (either in electronic or other media) [...]“
However I was unable to find this text, and their policy now seems in-line with the rest of the Nature journals.
“[...] Submission of a paper implies that it reports unpublished work and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Molecular Systems Biology allows and encourages prior publication on recognised community preprint servers for review by other scientists in the field before formal submission to the journal. The details of the preprint server concerned and any accession numbers should be included in the cover letter accompanying submission of the manuscript. This policy does not extend to preprints that are publicised outside the scientific community before or during the submission and consideration process at Molecular Systems Biology [...]“
Oxford University Press Journals
OUP’s journals include Nucleic Acids Research and Bioinformatics. Pedro had trouble soliciting a response on their policy towards preprint servers. However there appears to be some text on the main OUP site regarding this.
“[...] For the majority of Oxford Journals, prior to acceptance for publication, authors retain the right to make a pre-print [A preprint is defined here as un-refereed author version of the article] version of the article available on your own personal website and/or that of your employer and/or in free public servers of preprints and/or articles in your subject area, provided that [...]“
Prepublication on personal pages
I’ve put the complete list on the nodalpoint wiki, the journal policies are organised into two broad categories - positive and negative towards preprint servers. This list is also part of the set of wiki pages I’ve created with for the next special issue of bio::blogs. Feel free to jump in and contribute.
Preprint servers are a significant part of open science, however another important step is being able to discuss unpublished data on personal webpages. Journal attitudes are much less clear towards this.
One view point, discussed at Partial Immortalisation, is that as long as you don’t solicit attention from the media prior to publication, communication between scientists is encouraged. But this is only a single email correspondence with one journal group, albeit an important one. Therefore I think that this is a particular issue that needs further clarification. Preprint manuscripts, ready for submission, are one thing, but putting your data on your blog is a much murkier topic.
Any thoughts on this? Do you think it would be worth emailing individual journals to get clarification on this?
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Thanks for the info, I have to update that blog post.
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:57 pm
I definitely think it’s worth soliciting feedback from journals. How else are publishers going to know this is an important issue for us?
Case in point: I said to a colleague: “Hey, did you know that Nature is starting up a pre-print repository/ It’s a place where you can put presentations and posters and get a citation for all those normally unciteable things you do at conferences. You can also put manuscripts in progress up there.”
His immediate response was, “Can you still publish it somewhere else?”
I said, “Of course, and it’s an established tradition in other fields of science, like physics.”
I get the impression that he didn’t know much about pre-prints, and I don’t doubt that many other people and publishers are the same way.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
[...] I wrote about journal polices towards preprint servers. Since, Dave Robertson contacted me to highlight the Romeo database, which contains a list of [...]