Top 5 most-viewed PeerJ Preprints of 2018

by PeerJ Community | Dec 20, 2018 | Community

Alongside PeerJ – the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences, our preprint server, PeerJ Preprints, also celebrated its fifth birthday this year. With a number of scientific journals, funders and societies highlighting the importance of preprints to scientific advancement this year, 2018 has been an exciting year for preprint sharing. Preprints are now one of the fastest growing types of scientific content and with this growth means wider recognition of the benefits preprints can bring in facilitating scientific communication and speeding up scientific advancement.

Image credit: PrePubMed http://www.prepubmed.org/monthly_stats/

Preprints and indexing

At PeerJ, we are continually exploring ways to build links between preprints and peer-reviewed publications. We believe both formats are instrumental for open science to flourish. We are thrilled to have contributed to facilitating preprint sharing over the last five years, as well as expanding the discoverability of preprints alongside peer-reviewed publications. As of July 2018, all PeerJ Preprints are now being indexed in Europe PMC, a major repository for life sciences.

Preprints and DOIs

Image credit: Crossref blog post “Preprints growth rate ten times higher than journal articles” by Jennifer Lin

In addition to being indexed in Europe PMC, our preprints are also indexed in Google Scholar and each preprint is given a unique DOI for citation purposes and inclusion in grants and CVs. We look forward to working more with researchers and administrators in 2019 to enable wider use and recognition of preprints in tenure and promotion processes.

It is also encouraging to see funders taking a lead to encourage preprint sharing. For example, the Wellcome Trust recently announced in their updated Open Access policy (which takes effect 1 Jan, 2020) that preprints must be published where there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak.

Top 5 most-viewed PeerJ Preprints of 2018

PeerJ Preprints received a significant number of views and discussion on social media. Here are our most-viewed preprints this year:

Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature by Himmelstein DS, Romero AR, Levernier JG, Munro TA, McLaughlin SR, Greshake Tzovaras B, Greene CS. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100v3

Inferential statistics as descriptive statistics: there is no replication crisis if we don’t expect replication by Amrhein V, Trafimow D, Greenland S. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26857v4

Data organization in spreadsheets by Broman KW, Woo KH. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3183v2

The voluntary control of piloerection by Heathers JA, Fayn K, Silvia PJ, Tiliopoulos N, Goodwin MS. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26594v1

Open access levels: a quantitative exploration using Web of Science and oaDOI data by Bosman J, Kramer B. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3520v1

PeerJ Collections

A number of high-profile conferences used PeerJ to share their conference material as part of our PeerJ Collections. These collections are a great way to showcase the research presented at academic conferences and society meetings. Here is a look at some of our most active Collections over the last year.

The 4th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity Collection contains abstracts, posters, talk slides, and full-length manuscripts describing work presented at the 2018 World Conference on Marine Biodiversity which took place in Montreal May 13-16 2018. This meeting brought together scientists, practitioners, and policy makers to discuss and advance our understanding of the importance and current state of biodiversity in the marine environment.

The International Society for Geomorphometry (ISG) organized Geomorphometry 2018, the 5th in the series of conferences focusing on the free exchange of knowledge and opinions about various aspects of digital elevation model (DEM) processing and digital relief analysis. The 2018 conference had 50 presentations in sessions on stream networks; data resolution and scale; planetary geomorphometry; classification of topography; accuracy and error propagation; glacial and marine geomorphometry; DEM surfaces, lidar, and radar; and UAV/SfM.

The OGRS2018 Collection holds research presented at the Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposiums, which are biannual meetings of the OGRS community dedicated to sharing knowledge, new solutions, methods, practices, ideas and trends in the field of geospatial information through the development and the use of free and open source software in both research and education. In this year’s symposium, the OGRS community focused the discussion on this topic to promote, discuss and find pathways to put Open Science in Action.

For more information on arranging a PeerJ Collection for your next conference or symposia, please email us at info@peerj.com

Many thanks to all our preprint authors and PeerJ Collection partners for making 2018 such a success. Looking forward to a productive 2019! 🎉