A faculty member in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health has launched a free digital archive for nutritional sciences. Called NutriXiv (pron. -kive), this community-led platform for research publication was developed with the technical assistance of the open-source Center for Open Science.
[Photo: Dr. Kyle Burger]
Dr. Kyle Burger, assistant professor of nutrition at the Gillings School, is NutriXiv’s founder.
“Preprints are research articles shared publicly in parallel to submission for peer review at a traditional journal,” Dr. Burger noted. “They are helping to transform and shape the rapidly changing scholarly publishing landscape.”
NutriXiv accepts preprints, as well as articles that already have been peer-reviewed (postprints) to improve the accessibility of research that commonly exists behind a paywall – an approach that is compliant with many ‘green’ Open Access policies. By publicly posting early versions of articles and using a system of version control, nutritional scientists can accelerate the sharing of their research and access additional feedback from their community.
The platform was designed based on engagement with the research community. It offers support for multiple versions of a file, the inclusion of supplementary files, data and code, appropriate metadata, and links to resulting journal articles, including digital object identifiers (DOIs). NutriXiv welcomes contributions from all areas of nutritional sciences, including papers under review, working papers and manuscripts that might be difficult to publish in traditional venues. The most up-to-date submission of pre- and postprints can be found on the archive’s Twitter feed (@NutriXiv).
“We are excited to be working with the Center for Open Science to bring this platform to the global research community,” Dr. Burger said. “Open research practices will greatly improve the rigor and reproducibility of nutritional science. The initial support for NutriXiv within our community shows great promise for the future.”