4 Institutional Advocacy
The growth of the open education and open science movements is leading to recognition of open materials as part of institutional policy. Many institutions are beginning to accept preprints as part of their hiring, graduation, tenure, and promotion requirements. If you would like to advocate for preprint recognition at your institution, here are some example policy statements you can share with your administration:
Hiring
Ideal adoption
Candidates are expected to include preprints posted with open CC-BY or CC0 licences as part of their application. These preprints do not require associated peer review reports to be considered, although peer-reviewed preprints will be considered of equivalent merit and status as peer-reviewed journal articles. Engagement in open science practices such as transparent preprint peer review will be considered valuable ‘service’ contributions. These collaborative and open behaviours are qualities that we highly value in our colleagues and teammates.
Low barrier adoption
We encourage candidates to include preprint publications, along with other open-access works, in their applications. Where preprints are included, they should have a Creative Commons licence and an associated peer review. Posting of transparent peer reviews, preprint reviews and engagement in open science practices will count towards ‘service’ and are encouraged to be included in application materials. [Name of institution] prides itself on supporting researchers who contribute to openly accessible works.
Tenure and Promotion
Ideal adoption
Evidence of a commitment to open scholarship will be accepted in tenure and promotion packets. Tenure packets are expected to include preprints, and published articles should have an associated preprint posted or be available as an open-access version. In particular, the citing and use of preprints is strongly encouraged. Preprints will be accepted without any peer review if recently posted. It is strongly encouraged that preprints and published work will have transparent peer review reports available. All preprints and research articles must be available under a CC-BY or CC0 licence to permit reuse. Scholars who make their work openly available uphold [name of institution]’s mission by contributing to the broader research community.
Low barrier adoption
Promotion and tenure dossiers that include open-access publications, including preprints, will count towards the required publication amount. Published articles may be associated with preprints, and preprints alone can be cited in tenure packets. To enable reuse, preprints and published articles must be available under a Creative Commons licence, such as CC-BY, CC0, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, or CC-BY-ND. Where preprints are used, peer-reviewed preprints will be considered of equivalent merit and status as peer-reviewed publications published in good journals. Work that is made openly available increases discoverability and promotes [name of institution]’s departments.
Graduation
For graduation, we strongly discourage the requirement of publications as a condition of graduation. Further, we urge institutions to adopt preprints instead of peer-reviewed journal publications where a publishing requirement cannot be removed.
Ideal adoption
Submission of Research Manuscripts as Preprints: This policy encourages all master’s and doctoral students to submit their research manuscripts to a reputable preprint server prior to or concurrent with submission to peer-reviewed journals. The submission of preprints is intended to accelerate the dissemination of research findings, increase the visibility of student research, and foster a culture of open science. By explicitly encouraging the posting of preprints, institutions and graduate programs will help to promote norms around their usage.
Acceptance of Preprints in Fulfillment of Graduate Degree Requirements: This policy allows master’s and doctoral students to submit preprints in lieu of peer-reviewed journal articles to fulfil publication requirements for graduation. Accepting preprints aims to recognise the evolving nature of scholarly communication while reducing barriers to graduation by eliminating delays associated with the traditional publication process.
Acceptance of Peer-Reviewed Preprints in Fulfillment of Graduate Degree
Requirements: This policy permits master’s and doctoral students to submit preprints that have undergone journal-independent peer review in lieu of peer-reviewed journal articles to meet graduation requirements. By recognising the validity of these peer-reviewed preprints, the institution supports innovation in scholarly communication while effectively reducing barriers to graduation. This approach leverages the larger community of reviewers available for preprints, resulting in quicker turnaround times and a broader feedback scope than traditional peer-reviewed journal articles.
Source: Otto, Josie, Queen Saikia, Lamis Y. M. Elkheir, Melissa Chim, and Jonathon Alexis Coates. “Institutional Recognition for Preprints; Recommendations for Policies and Practices”. Zenodo, October 23, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13981665.
