A pre-print is the version of a scholarly publication that precedes peer-review. Sharing preprints on public servers like arXiv, bioRxiv, etc. is becoming increasingly common in some fields.

Some of the benefits are:

• Faster dissemination of research results
• Providing evidence of your latest achievements (N.B. pre-prints receive a DOI and are linkable)
• Establishing priority of discovery and getting credit
• Receiving feedback and enhancing quality

More information

• A Practical Guide to Preprints: Accelerating Scholarly Communication

• bioRxiv

  Preprints in biology from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

• medRxiv

  Preprints in medicine from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the British Medical Journal, and Yale University.

• ASAPbio
  ASAPbio is a scientist-driven nonprofit working to promote innovation and transparency in the life sciences.

• ResearchSquare
  Research Square is a multidisciplinary preprint platform.