Make your preprint open with purpose – ASAPbio

"This week marks Open Access Week 2020, which is running with the theme “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.” The theme provides a reminder that openness in science communication is a means to other uses rather than just an ultimate goal in itself. The same principle applies to preprints; we want to build on the benefits of faster communication that preprints bring to ultimately allow science to progress faster and researchers to receive credit for their work earlier.

Preprints are usually considered a mode of open science communication, however, whether a preprint is fully open access (rather than just free to read) will depend on whether the license under which it is posted allows redistribution and reuse. 

Licensing in the context of scholarly publications can be a confusing subject (McKenzie, Nature News), there are a number of licenses available and there can be also different licenses applied to different versions of the paper available, for instance, as a preprint, as an accepted author version, as the final version of record at the journal. What does this mean regarding licenses for the paper? It can sometimes be tricky to have clarity around licensing for journal publications, and similar questions arise for preprints: in the #biopreprints2020 survey we ran earlier this year, 56% of the respondents scored ‘Uncertainty about copyright and licensing of preprints’ as concerning or very concerning. Here we highlight some of the common concerns we hear, for a more in-depth guide co-authored with representatives from Creative Commons and other organizations, please see our Preprint Licensing FAQ. ..."