Preprint Invitation
Help build a broad, community-based Earth science pre-print service
2017 may be the year science pre-prints come of age. While the physics ArXiv has been around for decades, pre-prints are only recently extending across a wide range of science disciplines. It is the right time to consider a pre-print service for the Earth sciences.
Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is looking to coordinate an effort to build a community-led pre-print service that can span the Earth sciences and provide new publication capabilities for Earth scientists and data professionals. ESIP is a community of organizations that has, for the past 19 years, been dedicated to helping solve problems and realize solutions for the science use of Earth data. ESIP is not a publisher, and it's not a learned society (we have members that are, including the National Academy of Sciences). ESIP is a great place to come together to solve common Earth science infrastructure problems: like the need for a pre-print service.
ESIP would like to invite your organization be represented in the endeavor of building community leadership for an Earth science pre-print service. We have been approached by the Center for Open Science to partner with them and use their new pre-print server platform. So we have the technology side covered. What we still need to do is build the social side. And that is where your help is really important. You could do your own pre-print service. Any society can. But we need to think bigger. By combining our efforts into a common pre-print service we can grow this more quickly and realize its potential that much sooner for all Earth scientists. And we can do so with a nimble governance team where your society's interests are valued.
If you are interested, we have regular teleconferences to advance the planning of this new Earth science capability. To hop on to these calls, join the ESIP Slack team and then the #earth-sci-preprint channel to keep in touch. Or go to the ESIP Calendar and look for pre-print. You are welcome to join any of the calls. Tom Narock (tnarock AT ndm.edu), the Chair of the Pre-Print Cluster is happy to answer questions.
Please note that ESIP is leading in setting up the governance team for this pre-print service, but the leadership of the team will be determined by a process decided by the volunteers who step up to join in.
Thanks for your support
The ESIP Preprint Cluster