International authorship and collaboration across bioRxiv preprints

Abdill, Richard J.; Adamowicz, Elizabeth M.; Blekhman, Ran

doi:10.1101/2020.04.25.060756

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In total, we matched 54,289 preprints to a country (72.8%); for COVID-19 preprints alone, 6,692 preprints (65.4%) were matched to a country. Note that a similar, albeit more sophisticated method of matching bioRxiv affiliation information with the ROR API service was recently documented by Abdill et al [51].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic

Fraser

Brierley

Dey

et al. 2020

Preprint

107

109

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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 ...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic

Fraser

Brierley

Dey

et al. 2020

Preprint

107

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…World maps were generated using the Equal Earth projection ( Šavrič et al, 2019 ) and the rnaturalearth R package ( South, 2017 ), following the procedure described in Le et al, 2020 . Code to reproduce all figures is available on GitHub ( Abdill, 2020 ; https://github.com/blekhmanlab/biorxiv_countries ; copy archived at https://github.com/elifesciences-publications/biorxiv_countries ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

International authorship and collaboration across bioRxiv preprints

Abdill

Adamowicz

Blekhman

2020

eLife

Self Cite

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Preprints are becoming well established in the life sciences, but relatively little is known about the demographics of the researchers who post preprints and those who do not, or about the collaborations between preprint authors. Here, based on an analysis of 67,885 preprints posted on bioRxiv, we find that some countries, notably the United States and the United Kingdom, are overrepresented on bioRxiv relative to their overall scientific output, while other countries (including China, Russia, and Turkey) show lower levels of bioRxiv adoption. We also describe a set of ‘contributor countries’ (including Uganda, Croatia and Thailand): researchers from these countries appear almost exclusively as non-senior authors on international collaborations. Lastly, we find multiple journals that publish a disproportionate number of preprints from some countries, a dynamic that almost always benefits manuscripts from the US.

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“…Preprints allow scientists to directly control the dissemination of their work to the worldwide scientific community. The history of preprints started in 1961, and bioRxiv launched in 2013, covering life sciences and basic science; medRxiv launched in 2019 covering clinical sciences [37]. Preprints are important to accelerate science communication and facilitate networking.…”

Section: Early-career Delegates Sessionmentioning

confidence: 99%