Nature Cell Biology wishes Nature Precedings a happy birthday in its July Editorial (Nature Cell Biology 10, 753; 2008), in the process taking stock of the usefulness of “web 2.0” publishing ventures to cell biologists (and other scientists).

Nature Precedings allows rapid posting of unpublished (and unreviewed) manuscripts, conference posters and slide presentations. Entries are subject-tagged, searchable and citable. Postings are screened by curators for scientific legitimacy, plagiarism and scope, but not peer-reviewed for novelty or data quality; commenting and voting by readers is encouraged.

The immediate question for most cell biologists and other scientists is whether posting material on a preprint sever is worth the risk of being scooped. Nature Cell Biology concludes that although many cell biologists are still wary of preprint servers, they could consider posting solid data that are not likely to be published in traditional journals because they are confirmatory or negative. Well-controlled negative data are immensely useful to colleagues, so documenting them in a citable form on a preprint server is a valuable community service.

Related posts:

Peer to Peer on the first year of Nature Precedings.

Nature Network post by Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings.

Nature Network online discussion forum for the Nature Cell Biology editorial.

Futher information about Nature Precedings is available here.