So what exactly are preprints and preprint servers?

A preprint is a scholarly article written by one or more authors and posted on an open access preprint server at no charge. Preprints commonly appear prior to publication in a scientific journal and are under an author’s control. Case report preprint servers provide clinicians with a platform to broadly share their work with readers world-wide.

Preprint servers have been in use for almost 30 years in some areas of scholarly publishing such as high-energy physics, where collaboration and co-authorship are common, and in economics, where a prolonged review process is common. Today, some scientific journals post articles to preprint servers that have been accepted for peer review. The Lancet, for example, posts articles that have been accepted for peer review to the preprint server from SSRN (Social Science Research Network), a pioneer in online bridge-building between the worlds of working papers and scholarly publications that joined forces with Elsevier in 2016. 

Why is the use of preprint servers growing among authors and health science publishers today? Authors find preprint servers attractive because articles can be publicly shared. Posting to a preprint server, much like presenting at scientific conferences, does not jeopardize publication in most peer-reviewed health science journals. Articles posted to a preprint server are assigned a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that establishes a public historical record. 

The use of clinical health research reporting guidelines and checklists (PRISMA, CONSORT, STROBE, and CARE) helps ensure uniformity of data deposition to preprint servers and supports the publication of systematic, accurate, and transparent articles in the health sciences. Ultimately, preprint servers are a platform for accelerating the dissemination of new scientific discoveries and improving clinical outcomes for patients around the world.