LAUSR

The traditional definition of a preprint is a document that has been uploaded to a preprint server, is freely accessible to the public, and has not previously been published in a journal. Posting generally occurs the day of submission or the next day. There is typically no formal peer review of the article before it is posted online; however, it is checked for plagiarism and offensive/ dangerous content. The only requirement is that the article be scientific in nature. There is no typesetting or editing before posting online. Because they are not journals, preprint servers have no impact factor and authors retain copyright of their articles. Each online version of an article allows comments to be posted by the public. Once posted and publicly available, most preprint servers will not allow the author to withdraw or delete their article. The original purpose of preprints was to make new scientific knowledge freely available to the public before traditional validation via peer review. However, the term “preprint” is a misnomer because there may never be a future print version. In fact, some authors intend for the preprint version to be the first and final version of their article. Types of scientific works published as preprints include original research, review articles, editorials, and so on. The reasons for publishing preprints are varied (Bourne et al. 2017).