Speed is of the utmost importance in making application-based research ready for use in the real world. Changing times require us to accelerate research dissemination. Thus, traditional publication practices have been adapted to current needs where possible, and alternatives like paper preprints have been introduced.
What are preprints? Preprints can be defined as scientific manuscripts posted freely on public servers for views and comments before they are published through the traditional route in journals. Paper preprints also allow authors to gather valuable pre-publication feedback from experts in their field of study. But since preprints do not undergo conventional peer review processes, they may not all be authentic, scientifically rigorous, and trustworthy. Let’s look at the benefits of preprints as well as the challenges associated with them to understand whether they pose a risk to scientific research.
What are the benefits of preprints and why are they gaining importance?
Listed below are four reasons why research paper preprints have emerged as a popular form of scientific dissemination.
1. Paper preprints can speed up dissemination of research
Publishing a manuscript in a peer-reviewed journal is a lengthy process involving multiple checks and reviews of your manuscript and, often, numerous revision requests before it is accepted or rejected. This process takes several weeks to months. As a result, you may lose time, and your research may become outdated by the time it is thoroughly reviewed, or someone else may publish similar research before you do. The benefits of preprints are especially visible amid a pandemic, when traditional publishing models are unable to meet the urgent demand for rapid dissemination of new knowledge and insights into managing the crisis.
Paper preprints are a great way of accelerating the dissemination of your results. Once you upload your manuscript on a preprint server, it undergoes certain essential checks and is assigned a DOI within days. Your paper is then ready for the world to view and comment on, ensuring timely credit for your work. One big benefit of preprints on servers like medRxiv are that once uploaded, an article is screened within just 4-5 days, making it a preferable option for authors, especially during a global health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.1
2. Preprints increase accessibility and impact of research
Did you know that the world cannot access 65% of the 100 most cited papers because they are behind paywalls?2 Costly journal subscriptions and restricted access to a lot of important research can be frustrating. Moreover, limited accessibility impacts the pace of research dissemination.
Among the various benefits of preprints, one is that they tackle this problem by making research freely accessible. A key benefit of preprints is that you can post your article online for free. A considerable proportion of the audience, including independent researchers and academics, non-governmental organizations, educators, and the media, can access and benefit from learning about the latest research through preprints. A paper preprint is bound to get more views than a paywalled article and, therefore, be shared and cited more extensively.
3. Potentially fast-tracking career opportunities and avenues for collaboration
Paper preprints ensure that you don’t have to wait for an article to be published in a journal in order to showcase your work to job committees or funding bodies. Preprints can also help you attract invitations to present at conferences and seminars or to collaborate with researchers from the same field on high-impact research projects. Essentially, the benefits of preprints are similar to that of traditional journal articles, only they are visible much sooner.
4. Paper preprints attract reviews by a group of peers before the journal peer review
Posting a preprint allows you to gain valuable feedback on your research from multiple experts in your field. This can help you improve the quality of your paper preprint before the traditional journal peer review, thus potentially enhancing the chances of acceptance for your paper and increasing publication speed. James Fraser, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), views preprint publishing as an instrument for better science. He says, ‘Posting preprints offers people the chance to be more thoroughly evaluated, which is especially beneficial for younger scientists.’3
This point is supported by the fact that 71% of bioRxiv users reported receiving feedback on their research paper preprints.4 Readers can use the author’s contact information on the server to share feedback with the author through social media platforms, emails or conferences. Some preprint servers also allow readers to post comments on the server itself.
What are the challenges related to preprints?
While there are several benefits of preprints for authors, academic audiences, and the general population, they also come with a set of challenges. The largest one is that they are unrefereed since they do not undergo the conventional peer-review process before being posted on preprint servers. This lack of a thorough review can pose a major risk to scientific progress and undermine researchers’ work. Eric Topol, a member of bioRxiv’s advisory board, warned in an article in The New York Times that ‘anyone who reads a research paper preprint will embrace it almost in a blind fashion’ and process information selectively such that it aligns with their worldview.5
Often, preprints showcase eye-catching research that receives a lot of popularity through instant sharing. The risks of low-quality research receiving unwarranted attention, especially by non-experts, is high. In addition to that, there are risks of misleading information being spread because of an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of even high-quality research. A paper preprint posted early last year erroneously claimed that the structure of SARS-CoV-2 was similar to that of HIV.6 This paper preprint was shared widely across social media platforms and news channels, sparking rumors and conspiracy theories.
Many non-experts may not be able to identify academically rigorous research from among a sea of preprints of unverified quality. How can this challenge be overcome?
Focus on the dissemination of quality science
Preprint repositories are aware of the risks of misinformation. Hence, they have been proactive in warning the audience that the content is not peer-reviewed and is thus unverified. Several advise readers to use or interpret the content with caution, direct them to the latest versions of a paper preprint, and, if a preprint is withdrawn, state the reasons why.
bioRxiv and medRxiv are going a step ahead to address these challenges by implementing basic quality control checks.7 New manuscripts are subjected to plagiarism checks, and their basic scientific value is assessed by principal investigators (PIs) (on bioRxiv) and healthcare professionals (on medRxiv). The paper preprint is also scanned for ethics committee approval, trial registration, informed consent, and conflict of interests. medRxiv has been approving papers that are ready for peer review. Also, medRxiv does not accept individual case reports, manuscripts with small sample sizes, and those proposing COVID-19 treatments based only on computational modelling.
Researchers who read research paper preprints are trying to reduce misinformation risks by sharing feedback on newly uploaded preprints through different forums, including social media. Authors putting up their work on preprint servers need to serve as their own critics and shoulder the responsibility of ensuring that the manuscripts they post meet basic standards of academic work. Erroneous information or potentially misleading statements in a research paper preprint can undermine the work of the scientific community and damage an author’s credibility. So, as an author, how can you ensure error-free submissions and attract the attention of publishers and journals to your preprints? The answer is in smart manuscript submission check by Researcher.Life that helps determine if a manuscript is submission-ready.
How can Researcher.Life benefit preprint authors?
Researcher.Life is a subscription-based platform that brings together tools and services that help authors at every stage, including a robust AI-powered submission readiness checker. Comprehensive and secure, this one-stop evaluation identifies critical errors that could cause rejection and helps you ensure that your paper is error-free. For preprint authors, this is a great way to check for language, structure, references and other criteria that most journals use in their editorial screening processes. It also helps you prepare and refine your paper preprint so that it needs less work at the journal peer review stage, which allows for faster publishing success.
Preprint servers have been putting several key checks in place to improve the quality of manuscripts they host. Consequently, they have reduced the effort needed at the editorial screening and peer-review stages once journals eventually process paper preprints. However, the primacy of peer-reviewed journals over preprints remains unquestioned in academic publishing. Despite the many benefits of preprints, these have a long way to go until they can be considered a source of trusted science. Until then, the submission readiness checker by Researcher.Life can help researchers ensure that their paper preprints are as ready for dissemination as possible.
References
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), medRxiv. Retrieved from https://www.medrxiv.org/about/FAQ#:~:text=How%20long%20does%20it%20take,the%20paper%20is%20within%20scope
- Nicholson, J., Pepe, J. 65 out of the 100 most cited papers are paywalled. Retrieved from
https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/125400-65-out-of-the-100-most-cited-papers-are-paywalled - Socholastica, Authorea. Open Access + Preprints: Journals and scholars take action, 2016. Retrieved from https://asapbio.org/junior-faculty
- Coudert, F. The rise of preprints in chemistry, 2020. Retrieved from
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-020-0477-5 - The New York Times – Coronavirus Tests Science’s Need for Speed Limits. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/science/coronavirus-disinformation.html - Prashant P. et al. Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag. bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1
Kwon, D. How swamped preprint servers are blocking bad coronavirus research. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01394-6
