Preprint and VeriXiv myths – part one
| 20 February, 2025 | Jack Nash |
From January 2025, all Gates-funded research intended for publication in a peer-reviewed journal will need to be published as a preprint to comply with the revised Gates Open Access policy. This change in policy aims to ensure that Gates-funded research is shared openly, rapidly and at no direct cost to authors. To support Gates-funded researchers, the Gates Foundation has partnered with F1000 to launch VeriXiv – a verified preprint server.
If you’re new to preprints, you might struggle to separate the facts from the fiction to decide what is right for you and your research. That is why we’re setting the record straight on preprints by debunking some myths surrounding them.
In this blog post, we hope to answer your questions about preprinting and explain how to submit your work as a preprint.
I can’t publish my work in another journal once it has been published as a preprint
Most journals don’t consider preprints to be full publications, so they will accept submissions previously distributed as preprints.
Furthermore, preprints can help tell the story of how your research evolves and develops over time, as well as the iterations that have led up to the final Research Article published in your chosen journal. Gates Foundation-funded researchers have the option to preprint on VeriXiv and then submit to any other journal, or continue through peer review on VeriXiv and publish their work on Gates Open Research.
Other researchers will scoop my work if I post a preprint
Publishing your research as a preprint will make it available to members of your research community much faster. You can claim priority on your findings by documenting the provenance of your research via the unique identifier assigned to each preprint.
Like published articles, Crossref assigns every preprint a digital object identifier (DOI). This means they are instantly citeable via a permanent identifier. If the preprint is updated later, it will receive a new versioned DOI to ensure that the most up-to-date version is available for other researchers to cite. By being assigned a DOI, it will prevent your work from being “scooped” by other researchers in your field of research.
There are more disadvantages to publishing my work as a preprint than benefits
There are plenty of benefits to publishing your work as a preprint. For example, did you know that articles published as a preprint first receive, on average, 36% more citations than just being published in a journal?
In addition to increased citations, authors publishing their work as a preprint also benefit from:
- Priority claim over your findings: Publishing your research as a preprint will mean it will enter the public domain much faster. You can claim priority on your findings by documenting the provenance of your research via the assigned DOI.
- Proof of productivity: Preprints can be used to enhance grant, job, and tenure applications by showing evidence of your latest research output while you await full publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Accelerate scientific progress: By sharing your research under a Creative Commons open access license, your outputs will be freely accessible to other researchers. They can use your preprint to further their research and better coordinate research efforts, accelerating scientific progress by enabling others to build upon your findings.
The main disadvantage of most preprint servers is that they conduct a relatively limited set of checks on submissions to prioritize the speed of publication. VeriXiv is a verified preprint server with a much more rigorous set of prepublication checks than many other preprint servers, which provides readers greater peace of mind about the integrity of the research while still prioritizing rapid publication.
Discover more of the benefits of preprinting on VeriXiv in the following blog post on the Gates Open Research blog.
I’m not required to publish my work as a preprint
Depending on the details of your grant agreement and your funder’s Open Access policy, you may be required to publish your work as a preprint. This is the case for Gates Foundation-funded researchers. The updated Gates Foundation Open Access policy (effective January 2025) states that the Gates Foundation no longer funds APCs; however, researchers can submit their work to any journal as long as they publish a version of their research as a preprint.
Learn more about the updated Gates Foundation Open Access policy here.
VeriXiv is just another preprint server
You might choose VeriXiv instead of other preprint servers for many reasons. Preprints submitted to VeriXiv undergo enhanced prepublication checks to verify them, which assess various issues including authorship, ethical, and integrity checks. When submitting your research to VeriXiv, you are given the opportunity to further verify your preprint as an open research preprint through a series of open research transparency checks.
All preprints on VeriXiv are published according to the same production standards as a standard journal Article. Not only the abstract but the entire preprint will be fully typeset and tagged in XML, enhancing the readability and discoverability of your work.
VeriXiv also supports various Article types, including data notes, Software Tool articles and Study Protocols. The server can be used to disseminate outputs from all stages of a research project’s lifecycle. Once your submission has passed the prepublication checks carried out on VeriXiv, you can decide where to publish your research. Gates-funded authors have the freedom to leave their work as a preprint on VeriXiv, submit it to Gates Open Research, or take it to a journal of their choice.
To learn more about what makes VeriXiv unique, check out our blog post announcing its launch.
Looking to find out more? Visit VeriXiv for more information on how to preprint your Gates-funded work.
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