Preprints is a multidisciplinary preprint platform that makes research manuscripts from all fields immediately available. Moreover, it is a free (not‐for‐profit) open access service supported by MDPI in Basel, Switzerland.

Open Science—Making Research Discoverable, Sharable, and Citable

Launched in June 2016, Preprints has already had over 70 submissions and aims to provide an open access platform that covers all fields of research.

Open science calls for easy access and large‐scale dissemination of scientific and other research content. This means that a preprint service requires optimized search, possibilities to share content in research communities, reliable archiving, and the possibility to immediately cite content.

• Search by keywords in the article or comments, author name, author affiliation, subject areas, disciplines, or date posted.
• Share preprints on social media and bookmark them on external services such as CiteULike, Mendeley, BibSonomy, Reddit, or Delicious.
• Full text documents are permanently archived with specialist services.
• All preprints are immediately citable by their assigned digital object identifier (DOI).
• Track online mentions of preprints using article-level metrics service Altmetric.

Precedence, Contribution and Transparency

Preprints allows authors to establish precedence by posting their research results online before anyone else does, and the public commenting feature lets registered users easily share their feedback, which in turn improves the quality of the article.

Additionally, to ensure comments are transparent and constructive, referee information and review reports are public and citable; all comments and replies on a given preprint are public and made available along with the real name and affiliation of referees to credit their contributions.

Future Directions for Preprints

To conclude, we aim to further develop the service in the future. It will become a highly regarded platform where preprints from all subject areas can be posted quickly and simply.

Additionally, we invite you to visit the homepage and to read the full editorial for this article.