If you haven't submit to bioRxiv, well, you should

We all know that the traditional publication process delays the dissemination of new research, often by months, sometimes by years.

Preprint servers decouple dissemination of research papers from their evaluation and certification by journals, allowing researchers to share work immediately, receive feedback from a much larger audience, and provide evidence of productivity long before formal publication. The arXiv preprint server, launched in 1991 and currently hosted by Cornell University, has demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach.

List of major preprints servers - where to go

The most well-known preprint server is probably arXiv (pronounced like ‘archive’). It started as a server for preprints in physics and has since expanded out to various subjects, including mathematics, computer science, and economics. The arXiv server is now run by the Cornell University Library and contains 1.37 million preprints so far.

The Open Science Framework provides an open-source framework to help researchers and institutions set up their own preprint servers. One such example is SocArXiv for the Social Sciences. On their website, you can browse more than 2 million preprints, including preprints on arXiv, and many of them have their own preprint digital object identifier (DOI). In cases where the preprint has now been published it also links to the publication’s DOI.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory set up bioaRxiv, a preprint server for Biology in 2013 to complement arXiv. The bioaRxiv server has a direct transfer service to several journals such as Science and PNAS and a bit over 60% of papers in bioaRxiv end up published in peer-reviewed journals.

In more recent years a lot of new servers have popped up covering almost every field including the social sciences, arts, and humanities fields. Here’s a quick overview of some of the rest:

arXiv -> Mathematics, Computer science, and economics, Physics
EngrXiv - Engineering
ChemRxiv - Chemical sciences
PsyArXiv - Psychological sciences
SportaRxiv - Sport and exercise science
PaleoarXiv - Paleontology
LawArXiv - Law
AgriXiv - Agricultural sciences
NutriXiv - Nutritional sciences
MarXiv - Ocean and marine-climate sciences
EarthArXiv - Earth sciences
Preprints.org - Arts & Humanities, Behavioral Sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Materials Science, Mathematics & Computer Science, Medicine &, Pharmacology, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences