The place of eprints in scholarly information delivery
| Published date | 01 August 2001 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000005742 |
| Pages | 250-253 |
| Date | 01 August 2001 |
| Author | Jane Garner,Lynne Horwood,Shirley Sullivan |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The place of eprints in
scholarly information
delivery
Jane Garner
Lynne Horwood and
Shirley Sullivan
Definition
The term eprint covers a range of meanings.
While originally defined as an individual
author's or group's work, distributed among
colleagues and field specialists in order to
obtain feedback, the definition of an eprint
now is generalenough to include any electronic
work circulated by the author outside of the
traditional publishing environment.
Eprints can be documents that are posted
on eprint servers. Some eprints may be peer
reviewed before being posted on servers;
others are posted without peer review and
authors encourage feedback on the findings
submitted. In some cases, the eprints are
loaded on servers but are also submitted to
traditional journals that have a formal peer
review process. Eprints can be updated by the
author at any time, and earlier versions are
retained on the server. Eprints are used to
inform colleagues about research in progress
and to seek expert comment.
Eprint servers
Eprint servers are devices dedicated to storing
eprints and managing network services. They
are managed by various types of
organisations, including scientific publishers,
research establishments and university
departments. Some servers offer e-mail alerts,
where readers can register a profile of their
interests and will be notified by e-mail the
moment an article that fits their profile is
uploaded. Authors can send their own articles
through to servers using self-archiving
software[1]. Once lodged on the server,
readers can access the article to read it,
download it or print it. The reader also has
the capacity to provide immediate feedback to
the author via threaded discussion lists.
Background
The scholarly journal is an important
communication medium for the research
community throughout the world. As Lucky
puts it in relation to scientific communication,
``Communication has always been the
circulatory system of science, if not its very
The authors
Jane Garner is a member of the Arts and Humanities
Learning Resources Team, and Lynne Horwood is a
member of the Sciences Learning Resources Team,
Department of Teaching Learning and Research Support,
and Shirley Sullivan is the Electronic Information
Coordinator, Information Resources Access, Information
Division, all at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne,
Australia.
Keywords
Publishing, Internet
Abstract
The continuing high costs of scholarly information
provision have encouraged the proliferation of eprint
servers. We have seen the establishment of the Chemistry
Preprint Server, PhilSci Archive and ClinMed, to mention
just three examples. Both the well-established and the
evolving eprint repositories offer hope that academic
libraries can continue to provide access to required
scholarly information at reasonable cost. The paper
describes the advantages of eprint servers and possible
obstacles to their acceptance.
Electronic access
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
Refereed article received 17 March 2001
Approved for publication 22 May 2001
250
Online Information Review
Volume 25 .Number 4 .2001 .pp. 250±256
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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