Preprints to Foster Open Science

At ACI Avances en Ciencias e Ingenierías, we care deeply about open science. After all, we are an open access journal that does not impose an article processing charge, and all editors are volunteers who support open science practices. Our hosting and administrative costs are funded by Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ.

In a new effort to strengthen our open science practices, we have launched a Preprints server, Preprints ACI. Authors who send an article to ACI Avances en Ciencias e Ingenierías are encouraged to deposit their article as a preprint on the server. Authors from within and outside the community of Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ are also welcome to use our preprint server.

So, why should you consider uploading a preprint before your article is published after peer-review? In the first place, a preprint allows for direct dissemination of your findings. If you would already like to communicate your findings, or cite them, you can refer to your published preprint, which will have all its metadata correctly stored, and which will be equipped with a DOI. Similarly, if you want to start a debate based on your recent findings, sharing those findings with the research community via a preprint is good practice.

Preprints also serve to show the impact of peer review. If there is a public record of your work before and after peer review, the improvements in the work can be credited to the review process. As such, preprints are important evidence of the process of scientific publishing.

At the same time, preprint servers are always open access. Even if you plan to submit your paper to a subscription-based journal, you can consider submitting a preprint to a public server. Open access publications are important for equal access to publication, and by making your preprint publicly available, you contribute to the open access movement. Researchers from the Global South, who often may not have access to all subscription- based journals, can thus still access the research findings. Of course, if you publish with ACI Avances en Ciencias e Ingenierías, your work will be published open access as well.

Ultimately, preprints contribute to the ecosystem of open science. By publishing preprints, we can accelerate the dissemination of our findings, foster an open debate with our peers, and shine a light on publications before and after peer review. All these elements contribute to more openness and collaboration within the academic community. These values are important to ACI Avances en Ciencias e Ingenierías and our mission to support open science, and we cordially invite you to use our preprint server for depositing your preprints and contributing to open science.