In an article just published in Research Information magazine (December 07/January 08 issue), Timo Hannay and Hilary Spencer of Nature Publishing Group explain why this publishing company has launched a free preprint service for biologists, chemists and Earth scientists. They write:

“”https://precedings.nature.com">Nature Precedings is perhaps most easily understood as a preprint server that allows scientists to upload non-peer-reviewed (or pre-peer-review) documents so that they can be discovered, downloaded, read, and cited by other researchers. In this way, it is similar to arXiv.org, a website that has been providing an indispensable service to physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists for over 15 years. In contrast to arXiv.org, however, Nature Precedings serves scientific fields in which the open and early exchange of research findings has yet to take root. Running a preprint server might seem like a bold, or even quixotic, goal for a publishing company, but we strongly believe that such open and early exchange of information between researchers is in the best interests of science as a whole, and NPG exists to enable such activities."

Read the whole article Research Information : Features : PREPRINTS : Document sharing speeds up research for an account of the benefits of sharing research results in this way, and why it makes sense for a publishing company to develop a preprint-sharing sevice.