Preprint Articles: The Importance and Future of Preprint Publications

Preprint articles, or pre-peer-review open-access articles, have cemented themselves as an integral part of scientific publishing. This is because for researchers, free and rapid dissemination of their work is key to solving some of the world’s most complex problems and making an impact in their field. Preprint publication has emerged as an answer to these real-life problems, allowing researchers an avenue to quickly share their application-based research with the world and receive feedback before publication in a formal journal.

Publishing preprints is easy – all one needs to do is upload their manuscript onto a preprint server, where it is put through a few basic checks before the preprint paper is given a permanent digital object identifier (DOI) and made freely available to the public online.  Preprint articles enable authors to quickly share their findings, establish the primacy of their work, and improve it based on the feedback received in a more transparent manner, reducing the often-lengthy wait time to getting published in their target journal.

Preprint publication and the COVID-19 pandemic

Preprint publication, especially preprint articles in the field of virology and epidemiology, played a vital role as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world. With the speed at which new information was emerging, traditional peer-review processes were not able to keep up with the rate of discovery. This led to a surge in preprint publications, with about 25% of COVID-19-related science published as preprint papers; these preprint articles were also accessed, cited, and shared more often than other subject areas.¹

Amid the rapidly ballooning crisis in 2020, preprint articles proved to be a valuable means to share early data and key findings related to COVID-19, which then helped inform public health decisions and accelerate the development of high-impact solutions to tackle the global pandemic. This bellwether year for preprint publication crystallized the importance of preprint articles in academic publishing. However, it also raised some concerns around the quality, validity, and reliability of the non-peer-reviewed results as world media rushed to share ‘new findings’ with a frightened global audience.

Preprints articles or peer-reviewed journal articles

With many researchers choosing to share their findings as preprint articles without a formal peer review, questions arose about the quality of research being published. As a response, many preprint servers have implemented additional checks to ensure the quality of the preprints they host.² For example, bioRxiv and medRxiv have implemented review processes to ensure the preprint articles they host are of a high scientific standard, including basic screening to ensure scientific integrity and adherence to ethical guidelines.

A study that looks at the evolution and impact of preprints in scientific publishing reveals that 41% of preprint articles go on to be published in peer reviewed journals. Although preprint papers only form 4% of the research articles, this number has increased 63 times over the past 30 years. Moreover, preprint articles reached the audience an average of 14 months earlier than their print versions and were cited five times more than their non-preprint counterparts.³

While there has been a shift toward publishing preprints, it’s important to also check your target journal’s policies regarding preprints before making a choice. For instance, JAMA journals consider preprint publications when deciding to accept a submitted manuscript while Nature group journals do not let the fact that preprint versions of the submitted manuscript exist determine their decision to publish.⁴ It’s important to recognize, however, that preprint journals and peer-reviewed journals serve slightly different purposes. Preprint servers are meant to provide a platform for researchers to share their findings quickly, whereas peer-reviewed journals are meant to provide a more thorough evaluation of the research. In fact, preprint publications can be seen as a complement to the peer-review process, rather than a replacement.

The most popular preprint servers

Preprint publications have been around for 30 years, but it has only recently gained prominence as an acceptable means for researchers to share their findings before formal journal publication. The first official preprint server was arXiv. Introduced in 1991, it did not charge for publishing preprint articles, which were made public after a basic moderation process to classify submissions by topic and scholarly value.⁵ Presently, arXiv.org has more than two million preprint articles across eight subject areas, i.e., physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN), an open-access preprint community founded in 1994, allows researchers and authors in the field of social sciences to upload articles and abstracts that are permanently searchable online.⁶ Then there is bioRxiv, a preprint server hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), which is meant to complement arXiv and only accepts preprint articles covering research in or related to the life sciences.⁷ It conducts basic screening to flag offensive, non-scientific content and for plagiarism. Those in the field of medical, clinical, and related health sciences can turn to medRxiv, a preprint server that lays down strict guidelines on the nature of manuscripts it accepts. This server was founded by CSHL, Yale University and BMJ, a global healthcare knowledge provider.⁸ Meanwhile Preprints.org accepts multidisciplinary preprint articles and comprehensive reviews across all research disciplines as long as the content has not been published online before. Apart from discipline-specific preprint servers, some are available for specific regions or languages.

Simplifying access to preprint publications

Preprint publications have revolutionized the way scholarly research is disseminated. In the past, researchers would typically wait months or even years for their research to be peer-reviewed, published, and made available to the public. Yet, while preprints have solved the problem of rapid science dissemination, academics still need to scrawl multiple preprint servers to find the most relevant preprint articles and abstracts for their research. R Discovery, a smart literature search and reading app by Researcher.Life, is simplifying this experience for researchers by creating the largest repository on the go for preprint publications a range of topics.

R Discovery brings together more than 1.8 million preprint papers from 109 sources, including arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv and other preprint servers, making them available to researchers as part of their personalized reading feed. The app’s user-friendly interface allows researchers to search for preprint articles by keyword, author, or topic, making it easy to find relevant literature. Researchers can also save preprints to their library for later reading. The R Discovery app also allows researchers to receive notifications when new preprint articles are posted in their area of interest, so they never miss an important development.

To conclude, preprint articles, journals, and publications will continue as an integral part of scientific publishing, providing researchers a way to share their findings quickly and efficiently. However, it is important to be aware of the limitations of preprint articles and ensure that preprint publications are used in a way that complements and supports the traditional peer-review process.

References:

1. Fraser N, Brierley L, Dey G, Polka JK, Pálfy M, Nanni F, et al. The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape. PLoS Biology, April 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000959
2. Kwon D. How swamped preprint servers are blocking bad coronavirus research. Nature, May 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01394-6
3. Xie B, Shen Z, Wang K. Is preprint the future of science? A thirty year journey of online preprint services. arXiv, February 2021. Available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.09066.pdf
4. What is a preprint? Is it the right publishing choice for you? Columbia University Irving Medical Center Knowledge Base, January 2021. Available at https://library.cumc.columbia.edu/kb/what_is_preprint
5. About arXiv, Cornell University website. Available at https://arxiv.org/about
6. About SSRN, Elsevier website. Available at https://www.elsevier.com/en-in/solutions/ssrn
7. About bioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory website. Available at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/about-biorxiv
8. About medRxiv, medRxiv website. Available at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/about-medrxiv