The world continues to face a life-threatening viral pandemic. The virus underlying the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused over 98 million confirmed cases and 2.2 million deaths since January 2020. Although the most recent respiratory viral pandemic swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to current events has experienced a cultural shift in the interim. The scientific community has responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 125,000 COVID-19–related scientific articles within 10 months of the first confirmed case, of which more than 30,000 were hosted by preprint servers. We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, 2 growing preprint servers for biomedical research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, as well as characteristics of their propagation on online platforms. Our data provide evidence for increased scientific and public engagement with preprints related to COVID-19 (COVID-19 preprints are accessed more, cited more, and shared more on various online platforms than non-COVID-19 preprints), as well as changes in the use of preprints by journalists and policymakers. We also find evidence for changes in preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter and reviewed faster. Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in the dissemination of COVID-19 science and the impact of the pandemic on the scientific communication landscape.

25The world continues to face an ongoing viral pandemic that presents a serious threat to human 26 health. The virus underlying the COVID-19 disease, SARS-CoV-2, has caused over 3.2 million confirmed 27 cases and 220,000 deaths between January and April 2020. Although the last pandemic of respiratory 28 disease of viral origin swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to 29 current events has experienced a paradigm shift in the interim. The scientific community has 30 responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 16,000 COVID-19 related scientific 31 articles within 4 months of the first confirmed case, of which at least 6,000 were hosted by preprint 32 servers. We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, two growing preprint servers for biomedical 33 research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, 34 characteristics of their sharing on online platforms, and the relationship between preprints and their 35 published articles. Our data provides evidence for increased scientific and public engagement (COVID-36 19 preprints are accessed and distributed at least 15 times more than non-COVID-19 preprints) and 37 changes in journalistic practice with reference to preprints. We also find evidence for changes in 38 preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter, with fewer panels and tables, 39 and reviewed faster. Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in 40 the dissemination of COVID-19 science, and the likely long-term impact of the pandemic on the 41 scientific publishing landscape. 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54The first quarter of 2020 has been defined by the COVID-19 outbreak, which has escalated to 55 pandemic status, and caused over 3.2 million cases and 220,000 deaths within 4 months of the first 56 reported case [1,2]. The causative pathogen was rapidly identified as a novel virus within the family 57Coronaviridae and was named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (or 'SARS-CoV-2') [3]. 58 Although multiple coronaviruses are ubiquitous among humans and cause only mild disease, 59 epidemics of newly emerging coronaviruses were previously observed in SARS coronavirus in 2002 [4] 60 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus in 2012 [5]. The unprecedented extent and 61 rate of spread of COVID-19 has created a critical global health emergency and academic communities 62 have raced to actively respond through research developments. 63 Research developments have traditionally been communicated via published journal articles or 64 conference presentations. Traditional scientific publishing involves the submission of manuscripts to 65 an individual journal, which then organises peer review. Authors often conduct additional experiments 66or analyses to address the reviewers' concerns in one or more revisions. Even after this lengthy 67 process is concluded, almost half of submissions are rejected and require re-submission to a different ...

A potential motivation for scientists to deposit their scientific work as preprints is to enhance its citation or social impact. In this study we assessed the citation and altmetric advantage of bioRxiv, a preprint server for the biological sciences. We retrieved metadata of all bioRxiv preprints deposited between November 2013 and December 2017, and matched them to articles that were subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals. Citation data from Scopus and altmetric data from Altmetric.com were used to compare citation and online sharing behavior of bioRxiv preprints, their related journal articles, and nondeposited articles published in the same journals. We found that bioRxiv-deposited journal articles had sizably higher citation and altmetric counts compared to nondeposited articles. Regression analysis reveals that this advantage is not explained by multiple explanatory variables related to the articles’ publication venues and authorship. Further research will be required to establish whether such an effect is causal in nature. bioRxiv preprints themselves are being directly cited in journal articles, regardless of whether the preprint has subsequently been published in a journal. bioRxiv preprints are also shared widely on Twitter and in blogs, but remain relatively scarce in mainstream media and Wikipedia articles, in comparison to peer-reviewed journal articles.

Amid the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, preprints in the biomedical sciences are being posted and accessed at unprecedented rates, drawing widespread attention from the general public, press, and policymakers for the first time. This phenomenon has sharpened long-standing questions about the reliability of information shared prior to journal peer review. Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had been posted and subsequently published in a journal through April 30, 2020, representing the initial phase of the pandemic response. We utilised a combination of automatic and manual annotations to quantify how an article changed between the preprinted and published version. We found that the total number of figure panels and tables changed little between preprint and published articles. Moreover, the conclusions of 7.2% of non-COVID-19–related and 17.2% of COVID-19–related abstracts undergo a discrete change by the time of publication, but the majority of these changes do not qualitatively change the conclusions of the paper.

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