Maximizing the Impact of Your Preprint

We're excited to share some tips and tricks to help you prepare to make the most of your preprint submissions on the Open Science Framework (OSF). Specifically, we’re focusing on what you need to prepare your preprint to maximize its impact. This week we are releasing an update to our preprint submission process with new features to enhance your experience. This new update will streamline our preprint submission interface while keeping key features of previous preprint submissions. Let's dive into what you need to prepare for your next print submission!

 

TRY THIS!

1. Choose a Preprint Service to Share With Your Community of Researchers 

OSF Preprints partners with various preprint services like PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, LawArXiv, and Thesis Commons to support preprint sharing across different disciplines. Select the preprint service that best fits your topic and the community you aim to reach. If there isn’t a community-driven preprint service for your discipline, OSF Preprints is available for any discipline.

 

2. Get Permission From and Identify All Authors

Ensure you have permission from all authors to share the preprint. By posting a preprint, you confirm that all authors agree to share it and that you have the right to do so. Communicate with your co-authors about sharing your article as a preprint. All authors can associate an ORCID iD with their OSF account, which will also be included in preprint metadata.

  • To do: Gather conflicts of interest from all co-authors to disclose any potential conflicts. Examples include financial involvement in any entity, such as honoraria, grants, speaking fees, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, expert testimony, and patents or licenses.     
  • To do: encourage all preprint authors to get an OSF account and associate their ORCID iD.

3. Prepare Your Preprint File

Ensure your preprint is in an easily accessible file format. Preprints are part of the scholarly record and even if withdrawn the metadata of the preprint will be available. 

  • To do: Check that you’ve removed any information that shouldn't be shared publicly.

4. Prepare Supplemental Materials Or DOI’s to Peer Review Publications

The availability of public data increase transparency and make it easier for readers to find the underlying data. Gather DOIs or persistent links to any data used in your preprint to provide along with the preprint. You also have the ability to add a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), publication date, and publication citation to a peer review version of the pre publication both before and after the submission. This allows more connected pathways to find both your preprint and peer reviewed publication. 

  • To do: If you have supplemental materials such as code, protocols, surveys, or data, these files can be stored in an OSF project connected to your preprint. You can add supplemental materials at any time and remove them if needed, but it is recommended to have this material available upon submission.      
  • To do: Connect any peer review DOI link, publication date or publication citation to your preprint submission.  

5. Choose Disciplines

Decide which discipline(s) best fit your preprint. Adding at least one top-level discipline is required, and you can add more specific subdisciplines. The disciplines and subdisciplines available vary by preprint server. 

  • To do: Browse the subject areas on each preprint server's "Search" page. See our Search help guide for instructions on how to use discipline, tags, and subjects to maximize discoverability. If your discipline isn’t listed, tag your preprint with your specific subject area(s).

6. Decide on Licensing

It's important to choose the appropriate license to apply to your preprint in order to communicate how you want others to share your work. That said, it's not required to license your preprint.

  • (Optional) To do: Choose a license.The licenses available for OSF Preprints are CC-0 1.0 Universal and CC-By Attribution 4.0 International. Additional licenses may be available on some community preprint services. Learn more about different licenses at Creative Commons or Choose a License.

7. Write the Abstract

An abstract is included in your metadata and will help give an enticing summary of your work. You can type it directly or copy and paste it into the textbox during the upload process. Note that uploading an abstract as a file is not supported.

  • To do: Plan your abstract ahead of time, ensuring it’s at least 20 characters long. 

Remember: Review Your Submission 

Before any submission on our preprint services you wil have the chance to review all of the materials you have submitted. This is a chance for you to finalize your work and is often where last minute mistakes are caught! 

  • To do: Final review of your submission


We hope these tips and new features help you prepare your preprint for maximum impact. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out to our support team.


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