This presentation was provided by Tyler Walters of Virginia Tech, during the NISO Event "Open Access: The Role and Impact of Preprint Servers," held November 14 - 15, 2019.

1. TYLER WALTERS,
DEAN, UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES AND
PROFESSOR, VIRGINIA TECH
Preprints, Institutional
Repositories, and Impact on the
Research Institution
NISO/NFAIS -- Foresight Event
 Open Access: The Role and Impact of Preprint Servers, November
14, 2019

2. Quote for the day...
“As PeerJ’s CEO Jason Hoyt observes: ‘What we’re learning is that
preprints are not a desired replacement for peer review, but a
welcome complement to it.”
- The Scholarly Kitchen, Oct. 16, 2019

3. Preprint Servers and Institutional Repositories
 Is there a relationship between
institutional repositories (IR) and
preprint servers (PS)? Is there a role for
IRs in conjunction with PS?
 Who (people, orgs, institutions) has
which responsibilities for IRs and for
PS?
 It’s chaotic out there…

4. Definitions - The Preprint and the Preprint
Server
1) A preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer
review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint
may be available, often as a non-typeset version available for free, before and/or after
a paper is published in a journal. (from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint)
1) Preprint servers are online archives, or repositories, containing works or data
associated with various scholarly papers that are not yet peer reviewed or accepted
by traditional academic journals. Papers offered on these kinds of repositories
undergo basic screening and are checked for plagiarism (papers are not edited or
formatted before being posted online).
(https://www.letpub.com/index.php?page=author_education_What_are_preprint_servers_and_what_is_their_role_in_scholarly_publishing)

5. Definition - The Institutional Repository
The institutional repository (IR) is a set of services that a university offers to community
members to manage and disseminate digital materials created by the institution and its
members. This includes materials such as:
 monographs
 journal articles—preprints, author-accepted manuscripts, and postprints
 electronic theses and dissertations
 technical reports and papers
 working papers
 conference proceedings
 datasets
 administrative documents
 learning objects
 news information
Modified from: Lynch, Clifford. "Institutional Repositories:
Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age."
Association of Research Libraries.

6. Comparisons - Peer review support
Preprint Servers:
 Many PS provide tools to review papers
but current practice is to email comments
to author or use Twitter to share
comments. (from The Scholarly Kitchen, 10/16/19)
Institutional Repositories:
 IRs typically do not have peer review or
reader commenting tools. Not all the
material is presented to be reviewed;
many of the works are final versions.

7. Comparisons - Content recruitment
Preprint Servers:
 Authors/surrogates deposit to the PS. The
organization providing the PS typically
promotes it within the scholarly community.
 Content is being reviewed, recruited from PS
by publishers for journals.
Institutional Repositories:
 Self-deposit but in U.S. many IRs don’t get
populated unless repo librarian collects/ingests
materials, or RIM system is used and materials
are automatically transferred to IR.

8. Comparisons - Notification / Alerting services
Preprint Servers:
 Classification schemes for preprints in servers
are organized by disciplines and subdisciplines.
This is usually the case in larger PS.
Institutional Repositories:
 Don’t notify according to subject matter, may
notify by collection or community that is a part
of the IR. Most IR content discovered through a
web-available search tool like Google.

9. Comparisons - Content types sought
Preprint Servers:
 Preprints (pre-published papers, before any peer
review and editing)
Institutional Repositories:
Catch-all for variety of intellectual outputs (VTechWorks)
1. 44% ETDs
2. 10% Journal Articles
3. 10% Photographs
4. 8% Extension publications
5. 7% Press releases
6. 6% Reports
7. 3.5% Periodicals
8. 3% Presentations/Posters
9. 1% Conference proceedings
10. 2.5% Student papers, patents, books/chapters, A/V

10. Comparisons - Institutional alignment
Preprint Servers:
 Non-profit orgs led by university
researchers and affiliates
 Some publishers
 Universities - very few operate PS
 Scholarly societies don’t run PS
Institutional Repositories:
 Research univs., operated by libraries
 Univ. holds stake in their researchers’
scholarship. Commit to collecting,
preserving, providing access to
intellectual output of its community.

11. Impact on the Research Institution:
Some Considerations
 Faculty tenure review and
process
 Can we make some space (read: not change
the system) for review, evaluation, and
weighting of preprints that are made
available via a well-known preprint server?
 Review criteria: it’s about the significance
of the intellectual contribution to the body
of knowledge, whether discipline-based,
interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary.

12. Impact on the Research Institution
Faculty time and energy
 Where are university researchers
putting their time? Time is their
most coveted asset.
 ...the issue being faculty who
spend time initiating and/or
managing a preprint service and
related administration
Impact ontheResearchInstitution
Facult y t ime and energy
§ Where are universit y
researchers put t ing t heir
t ime? Time is t heir most
covet ed asset .
§ ...t he issue being facult y
who spend t ime init iat ing
and/or managing a
preprint service and
relat ed administ rat ion

13. Impact on the Research Institution
University Reputation
 Do PS have an effect here?
 Most universities don’t operate a PS; we can
only conclude that they don’t see PS as
adding value to their brand, thereby not
boosting the university’s reputation.
 How can we affect this, for the good of both
PS and universities?

14. Impact on the Research Institution
Unfunded mandate
Well, what are research universities supposed to be
doing?
 In my university’s mission statement: “...the
university creates, conveys, and applies
knowledge...”
 In our core values: “Fundamental to the creation
and transmission of knowledge…”
Universities are building research infrastructure. Must
build to manage and disseminate intellectual product of
our researchers. Period, no question about it.

15. Impact on the Research Institution
University Libraries
 Re-allocating resources to manage IRs, provide rights assistance and publishing support, curate data,
build data repositories, train on collaboration tools and platforms, and more.
 But who among us are hosting PS? Very few libraries are doing so. Why?
 Mostly, it is non-profit organizations, with many founded by academic researchers, that generate and
maintain PS.
From the AAU-APLU Public Access Working Group Report and Recommendations (November 2017):
“Universities will need to create infrastructure required by the public access mandates of the federal
agencies funding their research so that data collected to support federally funded research can be shared, to
the extent possible, with the public.”

16. Other considerations
To make matters more complicated…
 What about the relationship between
government repositories (e.g., PAGES, PubAg,
Pubmed Central), PS, and IRs?
 What about research data and the content of
these repositories? What linkages are there
between them and how will they be sustained?
 What impact does repositing research data
have on a PS? Should it be reposited with the
preprint?
 ?

17. Thank You
Tyler Walters
tyler.walters@vt.edu
tywalters1 on most social media
540.231.5595