Preprints are all you need
“Preprints”—scholarly manuscripts not yet captured by the publication industry—have greatly facilitated science communication speed and accessibility. Yet, the “intellectual perestroika” of online prepublications (Harnad, 1990) hasn’t been realized: Preprints continue to be treated as less authoritative versions of their “published” counterparts. Moreover, the services that underlie this gap in perceived authoritativeness—editorship, peer-review, publicizing, discovery, etc.—can be provided for preprints but commonly aren’t, and are provided by academics but incorrectly credited to the publishing industry. Why? To answer, we will conduct thematic discussions to identify and examine factors that hinder the appeal and adoption of preprints as first-class science communication citizens. We will then develop methods for overcoming these obstacles. By doing so we hope to move towards Harnad’s (1998) vision of the “final state toward which the learned journal literature is evolving”: Preprints are all we need.