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bioRxiv or medRxiv straight to our system for peer review.


Kenall, Research Square: First and foremost, they present an opportunity to make research better. Research has become increasingly multidisciplinary and more niche. Two reviewers rarely can do the job of thoroughly validating a research article. Making one’s submitted manuscript available from the start of (preferably before) the peer review process opens the door to feedback from a wider range of researchers. Having worked in the publishing industry, I’m also well aware of the difficulty of finding reviewers. The reader comes to the article not because an editor has asked him or her to but because he/she is genuinely interested in the research. Surely this is an excellent person to provide feedback on the manuscript? Of course, they also allow researchers to share their findings immediately, without waiting an average of 150 days in peer review. Peer review is extremely valuable in validating research, but it takes time. In some cases, an author might need to share their work early for practical reasons – to cite on a grant application, eg. But in cases of international public health emergencies, research cannot wait 150 days. It’s important we have a mechanism for immediate sharing.


Macdonald, Sabir, Koder, Pharmagenesis: With the current publication process being notably slow, the most obvious benefit of preprints to the research community is the early and rapid dissemination of research results, thereby accelerating scientific advances. As demonstrated by the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, it is clear that the broader access to scientific research through preprints has allowed the scientific community to


Tasha Mellins-Cohen


work collaboratively to combat the virus, minimising repetitive research efforts and improving patient care. Preprint servers allow research to be shared widely, and open licences allow researchers from across the world access to the latest advances, which in turn allows for more constructive feedback and even increased citations. In studies where research is time- sensitive or in areas where there is a lot of competition, it allows researchers a way to ‘time-stamp’ their research as soon as it has been discovered.


What are the biggest challenges for publishers around the rise in preprints?


Mellins-Cohen, Microbiology Society: There’s the easy answer, that publishers of journals who refuse to consider preprinted articles are cutting themselves off from the next generation of researchers. And then there’s the hard answer, which is that


Amye Kenall


preprints are the leading edge of a desire to publish differently, and if we don’t listen to our communities and engage with those desires, publishers risk becoming increasingly irrelevant.


Curno, Frontiers: Publishers have to decide whether to see pre-prints as prior publications and whether in principal, they will publish research that is already in the public domain. The decision they take may also depend on which copyright terms the preprint was published under; there may be a conflict between the publisher’s license and that of the preprint platform. Similarly, some journals have banned submissions based on preprints in order to discourage this practise based on their perception of risk to patients. Beyond that, there are challenges about linking articles to pre-prints to collate impact data such as citations, and how to deal with preprints if an article is retracted. A particularly interesting challenge for publishers is whether and how they are implicated in managing the potentially negative impact research published in pre-prints could have if taken out of context. The research community is aware the findings are unvalidated, but is the wider population, including the media? If findings where misinterpreted, or mistakenly used to inform government policy for example, the validity and reputation of all research could be questioned.


Steph Macdonald, Sarah Sabir, Tim Koder


Kenall, Research Square: I don’t see these two ecosystems as at odds. Indeed, I think they work in collaboration. Peer review through a journal provides a method of validation (albeit not a perfect one) and a valuable level of curation in our world of information overload. The challenge will be in the ability to work together to ease the user journey for the author and in ensuring there is no duplication of resources.


14 Research Information April/May 2020 @researchinfo | www.researchinformation.info


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