In praise of preprints

Fry, Norman K.; Marshall, Helina; Mellins-Cohen, Tasha

doi:10.1099/ijsem.0.003323

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Preprint servers (e.g., medRxiv, bioRxiv) accelerate access as well as the potential misinterpretation of results, and are a prominent part of the scientific community response to urgent health crises (e.g., Ebola, Zika, COVID‐19) (Johansson et al, 2018; Peiperl, 2018). Supporters argue that the transparency and critique received at preprint stage improves the final manuscript (Elmore, 2018b; Fry et al, 2019). Whilst conversely, it is claimed that the misleading nature of some of these early findings may be damaging (Yeo‐Teh & Tang, 2021), as retractions continue to be a rarity and on average take 3 years (Abritis et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID‐19 research papers

et al. 2021

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The impact of COVID‐19 has underlined the need for reliable information to guide clinical practice and policy. This urgency has to be balanced against disruption to journal handling capacity and the continued need to ensure scientific rigour. We examined the reporting quality of highly disseminated COVID‐19 research papers using a bibliometric analysis examining reporting quality and risk of bias (RoB) amongst 250 top scoring Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) COVID‐19 research papers between January and April 2020. Method‐specific RoB tools were used to assess quality. After exclusions, 84 studies from 44 journals were included. Forty‐three (51%) were case series/studies, and only one was an randomized controlled trial. Most authors were from institutions based in China ( n = 44, 52%). The median AAS and impact factor was 2015 (interquartile range [IQR] 1,105–4,051.5) and 12.8 (IQR 5–44.2) respectively. Nine studies (11%) utilized a formal reporting framework, 62 (74%) included a funding statement, and 41 (49%) were at high RoB. This review of the most widely disseminated COVID‐19 studies highlights a preponderance of low‐quality case series with few research papers adhering to good standards of reporting. It emphasizes the need for cautious interpretation of research and the increasingly vital responsibility that journals have in ensuring high‐quality publications.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID‐19 research papers

et al. 2021

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“…Posting preprints offers many different benefits to authors (Bourne et al, 2017;Fry et al, 2019;Sarabipour et al, 2019;Tennant et al, 2016). Primarily and necessarily, posting preprints ensures that anyone can access the paper on the Internet for free, regardless of their institutional affiliation (i.e., OA; "Budapest Open Access Initiative" [BOAI], 2002;Suber, 2012).…”

Section: What Are Preprints?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Guide to Posting and Managing Preprints

Moshontz

Binion

Walton

et al. 2021

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

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Posting preprints online allows psychological scientists to get feedback, speed dissemination, and ensure public access to their work. This guide is designed to help psychological scientists post preprints and manage them across the publication pipeline. We review terminology, provide a historical and legal overview of preprints, and give guidance on posting and managing preprints before, during, or after the peer-review process to achieve different aims (e.g., get feedback, speed dissemination, achieve open access). We offer concrete recommendations to authors, such as post preprints that are complete and carefully proofread; post preprints in a dedicated preprint server that assigns DOIs, provides editable metadata, is indexed by GoogleScholar, supports review and endorsements, and supports version control; include a draft date and information about the paper’s status on the cover page; license preprints with CC BY licenses that permit public use with attribution; and keep preprints up to date after major revisions. Although our focus is on preprints (unpublished versions of a work), we also offer information relevant to postprints (author-formatted, post-peer-review versions of a work) and work that will not otherwise be published (e.g., theses and dissertations).

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“…In general, publishers are willing to consider for publication this kind of material. For instance, as a response to Sheldon (2018) who warned that preprints could promote confusion and distortion, all the journals of the Microbiology Society jointly published an editorial (Fry et al, 2019) praising the role of preprints in enhancing scientific communication. Similarly, Nature journals (2021) ‘encourage posting of preprints of primary research manuscripts’ and Wiley (2021) ‘believes journals should allow for the submission of manuscripts which have already been made available on such a [preprint] server’.…”

Section: Preprints and The Digital Transformation Of Scholarly Conferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preprints as an alternative to conference proceedings: A hands‐on experience at EDICIC Iberian Meeting 2019

Urbano

Tafalla²,

Borrego

et al. 2021

Learned Publishing

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This article investigated a novel method of disseminating conference proceedings via preprint servers. The EDICIC 2019 conference encouraged presenters to upload their research onto preprint servers before the conference and did not produce a conference proceedings. The objective of this was to facilitate pre‐conference dissemination of the research and use the conference for debate. Authors could then submit their articles to a journal. A survey of participating authors shows that they had little familiarity with preprints prior to the conference. Nevertheless, nearly three‐quarters of authors deposited their preprints before the conference. Most respondents were in favour or pre‐conference deposit and believed it would allow conferences to run more smoothly. However there was concern that Library and Information Science journals will not accept submissions that have been issued as preprints. Authors also expressed concerns about the lack of recognition for their research if conference proceedings are not published. They highlighted the effort required to pass a double evaluation by conference organizers and then by journal editors, emphasized that the culture of preprints and open science is not consolidated in the discipline yet, and noted that the aim of increasing interaction and debate in the conference was not fully reached.

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In praise of preprints

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID‐19 research papers

Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID‐19 research papers

A Guide to Posting and Managing Preprints

Preprints as an alternative to conference proceedings: A hands‐on experience at EDICIC Iberian Meeting 2019

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