Fresh Research, Delivered: How to Set up Preprint Alerts - ASCB

"How do you keep up to date on the literature in your field? If you rely exclusively on PubMed alerts, you might be missing out on the very freshest science: preprints, which are manuscripts that have yet to undergo journal peer review. Since PubMed is only for peer-reviewed literature, we have to find them elsewhere.

While preprints are still a relatively new phenomenon in biology, there are currently several servers that host them, the most significant being bioRxiv, PeerJ Preprints, and the quantitative biology section of arXiv. A few preprints can also be found in other places like figshare and SJS. And while it’s not strictly a preprint server, F1000Research’s articles awaiting peer review are also worth keeping an eye on.

You could search each of these sites independently, a task that will only become more and more burdensome if new preprint servers emerge. Fortunately, there’s a better way.

Several free search tools currently index biomedical preprints: Google Scholar, PrePubMed (no affiliation with PubMed), and search.bioPreprint. You can also use some of these services to let relevant preprints come to you by setting up email alerts. Here’s how:..."