Abstracts

Data Sharing for Publications

by Meghan Byrne

Increasingly, publishers, funders, government agencies, and researchers are recognizing the importance of good data management and data sharing. Why is this important? How do researchers create a data management plan, and how can data sharing increase the quality and impact of their work? How do they find an appropriate repository for storing their data? How do they give appropriate credit to other researchers whose data they’ve used, and how to they ensure they receive appropriate credit for the data they’ve shared? When should data not be shared publicly? We will discuss these questions, and share what we have learned at PLOS, a non-profit, open access publisher, where we have had an open data sharing policy since 2014, which requires our authors to make openly available the data underlying the results presented in their papers when at all possible.

Preprints and preprint servers for all disciplines: lessons from the creation of EarthArXiv

by Daniel Ibarra

A ‘preprint’ is a version of a scholarly paper that precedes publication in a peer-reviewed journal posted to a ‘preprint server’, a platform purpose-built to host preprints. Preprints address several aspects of the traditional publication system and speed up dissemination, utilization, and citation of scholarly outputs. Preprints have been in use in some fields for over 20 years. For example, the original, Cornell-ran preprint server, ArXiv, which primarily covers Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science, hosts over 1.3 million preprints. Several new preprint servers (e.g. EarthArXiv, BioRxiv, PsyArXiv, ESSOAr, Paleorxiv) have recently been launched in many branches of the physical and social sciences, with many more in the pipeline. Major funders now encourage preprint submission in support of grant applications; thus informing grant reviews and academic advancement. Additionally, major publishers also encourage the use of preprints to help enhance the quality of research they receive and may ultimately publish. In this presentation, I will present an overview of the rapidly expanding world of preprints and preprint servers in general, with some examples from the recent creation of EarthArXix.