Preprint withdrawals: Proposing a FAIRly template-based approach

Despite the recent surge in the popularity of preprints, their withdrawals and the associated process have attracted little attention in the literature and remain ambiguous in practice. We will briefly present the results of our exploratory review of the literature about preprint withdrawals, and will provide a suggestion to improve current practices. We argue that, given the growing significance of preprints to scholarly communication, mechanisms for handling corrections of major errors of preprints should uphold the same principles of transparency as those of formally published articles as a baseline. Given the interim and community-led nature of preprints, however, we suggest the process of withdrawal and update should be made simpler than the equivalent journal process. Furthermore, we believe it is important to the future of research and research communication that information about content withdrawals follow FAIR principles. Accordingly, we present a straightforward template-based approach to preprint withdrawals, currently being trialled by Cambridge Open Engage. We will present the template and feedback we received to date. We seek wider community engagement and feedback on the applicability of our proposed approach to various research areas and preprint platforms, thereby understanding the circumstances where this approach might be inappropriate.