To preprint or not to preprint: A global researcher survey

Abstract

Open science is receiving widespread attention globally, and preprinting offers an important way to implement open science practices in scholarly publishing. To develop a systematic understanding of researchers' adoption of and attitudes toward preprinting, we conducted a survey of authors of research papers published in 2021 and early 2022. Our survey results show that the United States and Europe led the way in the adoption of preprinting. The United States and European respondents reported a higher familiarity with and a stronger commitment to preprinting than their colleagues elsewhere in the world. The adoption of preprinting is much stronger in physics and astronomy as well as mathematics and computer science than in other research areas. Respondents identified free accessibility of preprints and acceleration of research communication as the most important benefits of preprinting. Low reliability and credibility of preprints, sharing results before peer review and premature media coverage are the most significant concerns about preprinting, emphasized in particular by respondents in the life and health sciences. According to respondents, the most crucial strategies to encourage preprinting are integrating preprinting into journal submission workflows and providing recognition for posting preprints.

Call for papers: Current issues in scholarly publishing

“…Efforts to transition away from subscription publishing models have posed a series of new challenges: as open access models diversify, so too does the complexity of navigating licensing (Baldwin & Pinfield, 2018), embargoes (Koley & Lala, 2022), predatory publishing (Grudniewicz et al, 2019), and supporting authors with the rising costs of Article Processing Charges (Butler et al, 2023) through transformative agreements (Fontúrbel & Vizentin-Bugoni, 2020;Farley et al, 2021). In tandem, the Open Science movement has catalyzed advancements in publishing infrastructures and tools, such as preprint servers (Ni & Waltman, 2024). Open peer review initiatives such as Peer Community In (PCI) and MetaROR have emerged, aiming to facilitate the open communication and evaluation of research.…”