Research Square Platform Celebrates Publication of Its 50,000th Preprint

Nearly 30,000 preprints launched in past six months alone

November 16, 2020 – Durham, NC – Research Square, a multidisciplinary publishing platform for preprints, has surpassed 50,000 submissions since its debut in October 2018. 

Preprints, which are scholarly manuscripts published before they are formally peer reviewed, exploded at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the science and publishing community began using preprint servers to share large volumes of research as quickly and broadly as possible.

“Preprints have proved their value through this pandemic, showing how quickly science can advance when research is shared immediately on servers like Research Square,” said Michele Avissar-Whiting, Editor in Chief at Research Square Company.  “By contrast, peer-reviewed journal articles can take months to publish and are often viewable only by subscribers.”

Within the first 18 months of Research Square’s launch, the platform averaged about 1,100 preprint submissions per month. In the past six months alone, as COVID-19 research took off, that average swelled to nearly 5,000 preprint submissions per month.

Avissar-Whiting says this explosive growth is also attributed to Research Square’s unique ‘In Review’ integration, whereby researchers can post preprints automatically while submitting to one of more than 300 participating Springer Nature journals. 

“The innovative ‘In Review’ feature allows authors to track the status of their manuscripts and instantly see new iterations as the article progresses through the peer-review process,” said Avissar-Whiting. “A DOI upon upload, instant citability, and the ability to collect feedback from the scientific community are among the other key reasons why Research Square is growing so quickly.”

About Research Square Research Square, a division of Research Square Company, exists to make research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. Our industry-leading preprint platform, launched in 2018, is a  large, author-centric preprint server that brings transparency to the peer review process. Through our journal-integrated In Review service, innovative author dashboard, manuscript assessments, and research promotion services, we enable researchers to establish the primacy of their work, share it with the broader community, and receive useful feedback much earlier in the publication process. By improving the way science is shared, we accelerate the pace of global discovery and advancement. 

For more information on our platform and research promotion services, visit researchsquare.com. For more information on partnership opportunities visit company.researchsquare.com. 

Contact Phillip Bogdan, Communications Manager | 952-334-5986 | phillip.bogdan@researchsquare.com