Hi All,

Please find at this link some further information related to EarthArXiv, the preprint server for the Earth Sciences:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1C6g4mfG2nzJAKYwaAmrqSHUvT5wEvWRH

For those of you who'd prefer it, the text is included below.

Thanks!

Chris
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A ‘preprint’ is an as-yet, non-peer-reviewed version of a scholarly paper that precedes publication in a peer-reviewed journal; a ‘preprint server’, such as the community-led, volunteer-ran ‘EarthArXiv’ (www.eartharxiv.org), is an online platform purpose-built to host preprints. A preprint may represent the same manuscript eventually submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, although other content, which may currently be difficult to publish (e.g. datasets, method papers), can also be uploaded and, if appropriate, explicitly linked to the associated manuscript. In this way, preprints provide access to important scholarly content that would otherwise be lost.

Preprints are an effort to address several aspects of the traditional publication system that may be considered, given the technological benefits of the internet, somewhat antiquated. For example, they can speed up dissemination, utilisation, and citation of scholarly outputs, and can also help build your network and may facilitate establishment of new collaborations; this may be particularly beneficial for ECRs and/or researchers moving into new areas. Furthermore, because they are timestamped and receive a DataCite-minted DOI, preprints provide an undeniable record of priority and ‘ownership’, which all but eliminates the chance of being “scooped”. Preprints also allow for no-cost publishing, are Open Access (OA) on submission, and are indexed by Google Scholar and discoverable by web-tools such as Unpaywall.

Despite being new to many if not most Earth Scientists, preprints have been in use for >20 years. For example, the original, Cornell-ran preprint server, ArXiv, which covers, amongst other things, Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science, hosts >1.3 million preprints. Furthermore, several new preprint servers (e.g. BioRxiv, PsyArXiv, Paleorxiv) have recently been launched in many branches of the physical and social sciences, with many more in the pipeline. Major funders (e.g. German Science Foundation (DFG), Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Cancer Research) now encourage preprint submission in support of grant applications; preprints may thus inform grant review process and academic advancement at all levels of experience. In fact, some major US-based academic institutions actively encourage job applicants to include preprints in support of their applications. Major publishers, such as Nature, also actively encourage the use of preprints to help enhance the quality of research they receive and may ultimately publish, and AGU have recently announced their intention to launch their own Wiley-supported preprint server, ESSOAr. We should also add that EarthArXiv, like several other preprint servers, also hosts and can thus act as a repository for ‘postprints’ (i.e. published articles), helping facilitate (Green) OA and meeting the needs of the many researchers who lack an institutional and/or national scholarly publications repository.

A group of international volunteers, organised by the Earth Science Information Partners (http://www.esipfed.org/), recently built EarthArXiv a community-led preprint service for the Earth Sciences, which is built on infrastructure provided by the non-profit Center for Open Science’s (https://cos.io/) ‘Open Science Framework’. Since launching in October, EarthArXiv has received >150 submissions in just 6 weeks, with material spanning a range of Earth Science disciplines, some of which is relevant to the TSG community (e.g. geodynamics, tectonics, structural geology, thermochronology, etc). There have been almost 3000 visitors to the site, so we strongly encourage you to visit and personally assess the quality of material available for consumption. We have been featured in Nature (http://www.nature.com/news/giant-pandas-gender-lawsuit-and-more-disaster-havoc-1.22664) and Science http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/dueling-preprint-servers-coming-geosciences), and on several science podcasts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYccGyVh4g). In early-2018 we will visit SpringerNature and PLOSone to discuss future developments in the area of preprints, and we will host a ‘Townhall’ meeting, alongside AGU, at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact either Chris Jackson ([log in to unmask]) or Tom Narock ([log in to unmask]), two of the co-founders of EarthArXiv. Some additional information and ‘FAQs’ are available here: http://bit.ly/2BqagsH. We welcome feedback and look forward to discussions on how we can improve this service!