SUIT & KSMA Resource Guide

What are pre-print servers?

Pre-prints are research articles that have yet to go through peer review.  Some disciplines have a culture of sharing pre-prints (e.g. Maths and Physics) where the pre-print itself forms the final research output i.e. not destined to be published in a journal.  Pre-prints are useful to show early work although care must be taken in using the findings of the research without any other expert review.  Sometimes, pre-print servers allow for other researchers to comment on the work so that you can see real-time, 'open', review of the article.  Pre-prints, where later published in a journal, often include links to later versions of the article.

Below is a selection of well known pre-print servers and further examples can be found via a web search:

Alternatives to Google Scholar

Many students use Google and Google Scholar to search the literature but there are other tools out there that are also free to search.  Like Google Scholar, they do not provide full text access, but they are good alternatives for a more sophisticated search and mimic some of the features found in the established tools for literature searching that libraries worldwide may subscribe to (e.g. Web of Science or Scopus).  For example:

• publication activity over time i.e. trends in the literature
• who is publishing the most on your topic e.g. by author or journal
• identifying links between research articles and a funded project (i.e. to see other outputs of that project or to clarify that a research paper originates from national funding)
• filter options for funder, institution, journal, subject area and type of output e.g. patent, article, review article, chapter, whether open access etc.