Genome Research Journal Changes its Preprint Policy

Genome Research, published by Cold Spring Harbor Lab, is a leading journal and is one of our favorite places for genomics- related papers. Its biggest appeal to us is in its publication of algorithm- heavy papers written by bioinformaticians. For example, much revered Velvet and SGA papers were originally published by Genome Research.

Few months back, we were taken aback after learning that the journal had a policy of not accepting manuscripts uploaded to preprint servers (arxiv.org). Some of us politely requested the journal editor to reconsider its policy.

Joseph Pickrell of Haldane’s Sieve brought us the good news today -

The journal only accepts papers that present original research that has not been published previously. Conference presentations or posting unrefereed manuscripts on not-for-profit community preprint servers will not be considered prior publication. Authors are responsible for updating the archived preprint with the journal reference (including DOI), and a link to the published article on the Genome Research website upon publication. [emphasis added]

That means conference papers and preprints posted in arxiv.org can be further submitted to Genome Research, BUT preprints posted in Nature’s archive will not be considered by them.

Overall it is a great decision by Genome Research and compensate for the loss of GATK going closed-source !!