This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Preprints, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://preprints.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
JMIR Preprints is a preprint server and "manuscript marketplace" with manuscripts that are intended for community review. Great manuscripts may be snatched up by participating journals which will make offers for publication.There are two pathways for manuscripts to appear here: 1) a submission to a JMIR or partner journal, where the author has checked the "open peer-review" checkbox, 2) Direct submissions to the preprint server. For the latter, there is no editor assigning peer-reviewers, so authors are encouraged to nominate as many reviewers as possible, and set the setting to "open peer-review". Nominated peer-reviewers should be arms-length. It will also help to tweet about your submission or posting it on your homepage. For pathway 2, once a sufficient number of reviews has been received (and they are reasonably positive), the manuscript and peer-review reports may be transferred to a partner journal (e.g. JMIR, i-JMR, JMIR Res Protoc, or other journals from participating publishers), whose editor may offer formal publication if the peer-review reports are addressed. The submission fee for that partner journal (if any) will be waived, and transfer of the peer-review reports may mean that the paper does not have to be re-reviewed. Authors will receive a notification when the manuscript has enough reviewers, and at that time can decide if they want to pursue publication in a partner journal. For pathway 2, if authors do not wish to have the preprint considered in a partner journal (or a specific journal), this should be noted in the cover letter. Also, note if you want to have the paper only considered/forwarded to specific journals, e.g. JMIR, PLOS, PEERJ, BMJ Open, Nature Communications etc), please specify this in the cover letter. Manuscripts can be in any format. However, an abstract is required in all cases. We highly recommend to have the references in JMIR format (include a PMID) as then our system will automatically assign reviewers based on the references.
Open peer-review models have been tested since 2006 [
JMIR Preprints is a preprint server with manuscripts that are intended for community review. Manuscripts may include original research, viewpoints/opinion pieces, reviews, tutorials, or even project ideas, proposals and research protocols. There are two submission pathways for manuscripts to appear here:
1) a submission to any JMIR or participating partner journal, where the author has checked the "open peer-review" checkbox,
2) direct submissions to the preprint server via
For the latter ("pathway 2"), there is no editor assigning peer-reviewers, so authors are encouraged to nominate as many reviewers as possible, and select the checkbox "open peer-review" when submitting. Nominated peer-reviewers should be arms-length. It will also help to tweet about your submission or posting it on your homepage.
For pathway 2, once a sufficient number of reviews has been received (and they are reasonably positive), the manuscript and peer-review reports may be transferred to a partner journal (e.g. JMIR, i-JMR, JMIR Res Protoc, or other journals from participating publishers), whose editor may offer formal publication if the peer-review reports are addressed. The submission fee for that partner journal (if any) will be waived, and transfer of the peer-review reports may mean that the paper does not have to be re-reviewed. Authors will receive a notification when the manuscript has enough reviewers, and at that time can decide if they want to pursue publication in a partner journal. For pathway 2, if authors do not wish to have the preprint considered in a partner journal (or a specific journal), this should be noted in the cover letter (and/or select the appropiate "section" which states "For review and publication on Preprints only". Also, note that if you want to have the paper only considered/forwarded to specific journals, e.g. JMIR, PLOS, PEERJ, BMJ Open, Nature Communications etc), you can specify this in the cover letter. If the author selected "For review and publication on Preprints only" (or if he selected forwarding to any partner journal, but none of the editors is interested in it), then the paper can also be published "as-is" on Preprints. This involves assignment of a DOI and (optional) publication of the peer-review reports. There is no copyediting or typesetting for papers on Preprints.
Manuscripts can be in any format and can cover any subject within medicine, although there is a focus on technology and innovation. However, an abstract is required in all cases. We highly recommend to have the references in JMIR format (include a PMID) as then our system will automatically assign reviewers based on the references.
We look forward to your submissions, and hope that researchers will continue to participate in our vibrant peer-review community, which actually already exists since December 2009 under the label of "Open Peer Review", and which is now being rebranded as "JMIR Preprints".
G. Eysenbach
Publisher, JMIR Publications