Preprints: possibilities for a new ecosystem

Posting papers as preprints allows rapid communication of research findings and so speeds up the scientific process. The practice has been common in physics and computational science for over 30 years but is now being embraced by biologists, health scientists and other academic fields. The decoupling of dissemination from peer review that preprints provide is also stimulating evolution of the publishing ecosystem. It has the potential to improve the way in which scientific information is presented, verified, reviewed and curated, as well as benefiting individuals by allowing more multi- dimensional and equitable forms of assessment.