Lack of sustainability plans for preprint services risks their potential to improve science | Naomi Penfold, March 2nd, 2023 | Impact of Social Sciences

peter.suber's bookmarks 2023-03-02

Summary:

"...it is critical we explore how to sustain a viable and vibrant ecosystem of preprints infrastructure that is independent of commercial publishers – this is not yet assured. This infrastructure includes servers through which preprints are shared online, as well as tools and services that support the use of preprints. arXiv is a preprint server that is considered essential in several communities in physics, computer science and other quantitative disciplines. Despite successfully building a revenue model that shares the burden between Cornell University, the Simons Foundation and several members and supporters, arXiv’s “funding is still outpaced by [their] growth” – the server hosts over 2 million preprints already and is growing by 10% each year. And while arXiv has been supporting more and more scholars to share and discover preprints, the team behind it has been through significant changes in leadership and is dealing with the urgent need to modernize their 30-year-old technology. As a former Executive Director of arXiv noted, “[arXiv’s success] may not last forever”. Similarly, the recent news that Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has renewed its financial support for the leading preprint servers in biology and medicine, bioRxiv and medRxiv is welcome relief, but this support is temporary, and the team must find a way to continue in the long run. Unfortunately, without greater transparency in the governance of bioRxiv and medRxiv, we do not know if there is anything stopping them from being acquired by a commercial publisher...."

Link:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/03/02/lack-of-sustainability-plans-for-preprint-services-risks-their-potential-to-improve-science/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks
[IOI] Open Infrastructure Tracking Project » Items tagged with oa.infrastructure in Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ioi_ab's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.repositories oa.repositories.preprints oa.sustainability oa.preprints oa.new oa.infrastructure oa.funding oa.economics_of oa.risks oa.repositories

Date tagged:

03/02/2023, 08:23

Date published:

03/02/2023, 05:04