The National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Preprint Pilot this summer, making NIH-funded preprints now searchable in PubMed Central (PMC) and discoverable in PubMed. Preprints are the non-peer-reviewed version of research articles that precede publication in a scholarly journal. Preprints will be clearly marked in both PMC and PubMed when returned in the search results.
In the pilot’s first phase, SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 preprints from NIH-supported researchers will be included in the results. The following preprint servers with the highest volume of papers relating to COVID-19 are included: medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, arXiv, Research Square, and SSRN. The NIH plans to expand the scope of the preprints indexed in future phases to support the full spectrum of NIH-funded research.
The Welch Medical Library COVID-19 Resources Guide offers researchers SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 example search strategies to support literature searches in PubMed.
More information about the NIH Preprint Pilot can be found here:
- https://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/Preprint_Pilot.html
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/nihpreprints/
Also hear from fellow Johns Hopkins University researchers by checking out the overview and recording of the Welch Medical Library and Bloomberg School of Public Health’s event: “The Role of Preprints in the Scholarly Ecosystem.”