Today's research is truly awesome. Researchers can now analyze and perform experiments that would have been thought impossible only a few decades ago. From the deep sequencing of nearly any animal genome with ease \cite{DePristo_2011} to the discovery of the Higgs Boson \cite{ATLAS_Collaboration_2012}, we are in a period of great innovation and understanding. And yet, how we share our ideas (i.e. publishing) has not changed very much in nearly 350 years. In short, scientists are doing 21st-century research, writing on 20th-century tools, and packaging it in 17th-century formats.
The fact that research communication hasn't changed in hundreds of years may signal that it works, right? Well in some regards--yes, the work is persistent and we have copies of some of the world's most important ideas (yay librarians!). Yet, in many other regards research communication is failing us: data sharing is rare \cite{Alsheikh_Ali_2011}, the majority of work is hard to access (it's pay-walled) \cite{Bj_rk_2010}, publishing takes months to years to complete \cite{Himmelstein_2016}, and classical peer review does not detect major errors \cite{Smith_2010}. As a consequence, we're now seeing major problems with the reproducibility of findings in disciplines like cancer research and psychology \cite{Begley_2012,eLife_2017,Open_Science_Collaboration_2015}.
To understand how we got to where we are today, it is useful to look at the history of research publishing, how and why it got started, and the changes that occured along the way. Here, we outline an very brief history of research publishing, with particular emphasis on preprints, in hopes of providing a stage to discuss what publishing might look like in the near future.
A brief history of the research journal
The first journal article, published in 1655, by Philosophical Transactions marked a step towards the formalization of the communication of research in article format \cite{Oldenburg_1665}. As noted in the introductory editorial, research communication was seen as necessary for the advancement of research: "Whereas there is nothing more necessary for promoting the improvement of Philosophical Matters, than the communication of such" \cite{1665}.