Enabling preprint discovery, evaluation, and analysis with Europe PMC.

Area of Science:

• Life Sciences
• Scientific Communication
• Bibliographic Databases

Background:

• Preprints are crucial for rapid dissemination of research findings and scientific commentary.
• The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for immediate access to research, increasing preprint usage.
• Expanding preprint servers necessitates improved discoverability and accessibility of early research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe Europe PMC's initiatives to enhance preprint visibility and reuse.
• To detail the integration of preprints into an open database of life science literature.
• To outline strategies for building trust and supporting the scientific community's use of preprints.

Main Methods:

• Indexing preprint abstracts and metadata from multiple platforms starting in July 2018.
• Expanding coverage to include full-text preprints for COVID-19 (July 2020) and Europe PMC funder-supported preprints (April 2022).
• Providing programmatic search access and bulk download of JATS XML-formatted preprints.

Main Results:

• Increased coverage and accessibility of life science preprints within Europe PMC.
• Enabled large-scale analyses of preprint corpora through machine-readable data.
• Facilitated automated information extraction for scientific research.

Conclusions:

• Indexing preprints alongside peer-reviewed publications offers significant benefits for scientific communication.
• Europe PMC's approach enhances trust, discoverability, and reuse of preprints.
• Addressing challenges in preprint integration supports wider sharing of early research findings.