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Increase your Research Impact: Preprints, Postprints, and Conference Posters

As a researcher, there’s a lot of work you do that doesn’t get the traditional treatment aka doesn’t get published. This doesn’t mean that this knowledge isn’t less valuable, it means it hasn’t been through the peer review process. Traditional publishing is standard, but it does take time to get your work published and for someone else to cite your research and get published themselves. Citations can help you measure your research impact, but they aren’t the only way. With the creation of online repositories, you have tools available to place your research online outside of the traditional publishing realm.

When you submit your preprints, postprints, conference poster, etc., you make your research more discoverable, therefore increasing the chances that others view your work. According to impactstory.org, scientists report getting citations for preprints in articles that are published before their articles are, and citing others ahead of their article’s formal publication. This also helps accelerate science and discovery allowing others to build upon your work more quickly.

At Mizzou Libraries, you have access to MOSpace which is a freely available online repository for scholarship and other works by University of Missouri faculty, students, and staff. You retain your copyright, and we provide access. Once items are submitted, the platform can provide statistics like number of downloads and which countries those downloads come from. Materials freely available on the web often reach a wider audience than those available in high-cost journals.

For example, a postprint of the following article was added to MOspace in 2018.

Since the post print was added, the article has 3,441 downloads from all over the world, which is up from 2,611 in October 2021.

Interested in seeing the worldwide impact of your research? Submit your your work using our online form today.