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Feature g


‘Since we launched RR:C19, we’ve seen that the preprint servers link [preprints] back to our reviews - so they clearly see a need for review,’ highlights Lindsay. ‘And publications such as The New York Times are also picking up our reviews and using them as evidence.’ For Lindsay and many in scholarly publishing, this wider understanding of the preprint is critical. As he puts it: ‘Faculty understand the difference between a preprint and a published article, but for plenty of others it’s difficult to understand what the difference actually is. ‘We need to engage in efforts to


ensure people understand that there is a profound difference between the preprint and published article.’ Nic Marsh, senior researcher at The


Peace Research Institute Oslo (Prio), agrees. Since the onset of the pandemic, Marsh has also noted how more and more preprints are being used more broadly than ever before. ‘The public doesn’t always know the difference between a peer-reviewed journal and a predatory journal, or even a preprint server – if it looks like academic research then it can be really difficult for someone to spot what’s high-quality and what isn’t,’ he says. However, he points out that pandemic-


related preprints have been more widely used to further research: ‘I’ve seen some really significant findings first published as a preprint and quite senior researchers using this a route to publication. It is important to note that research not published in academic journals is commonly reviewed by peers for publications – and such non-anonymous reviews can be very useful.


Understanding change Researchers at Prio seek to understand the processes that bring societies together or split them apart, and in recent months Marsh has been investigating peer review and the societal impact of different forms of Covid-19 research publications. His study, based on a Covid-19 Reddit forum comprising some 300,000 members, indicates that preprints and other non-peer-reviewed publications, such as press releases, are widely read and are now challenging peer-reviewed publications as a means of disseminating research.


‘With the pandemic there’s a clear


need to get information out as quickly as possible,’ he says. ‘This underlines that even though many publishers have accelerated the publication process, it’s still perhaps too slow for a pandemic.’ Clearly ongoing debate on the role of peer review in the research lifecycle will


6 Research Information February/March 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology


“We need to… ensure people understand there is a profound difference between the preprint and published article”


continue to hold importance for many years to come. But for now, will the likes of RR:C19 and similar endeavours such as the rapid review of Covid-19 Registered Report submissions by PeerJ, PLOS Biology and other journals, help to deliver the current need for speed? Professor Detlef Weigel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and eLife deputy editor, thinks so. Late last year, eLife announced that


come July it will only review manuscripts already published as preprints, and will focus its editorial process on producing public reviews to be posted alongside the preprints. The open access publisher’s new ‘publish, then review’ model follows in-house analysis that indicated around 70 per cent of papers under review were already available as preprints. As Weigel says: ‘I wouldn’t say our move


to this model is tied to the pandemic, but certainly the vast volumes of Covid-19 papers appearing on [preprint servers] have pushed us towards this.’ eLife is phasing in public review, with


authors currently retaining a degree of control over when the review is published. If editors decide a paper is not appropriate for the journal, they will allow authors to postpone the posting of the public review


until the paper is published elsewhere, so unfavourable review will not influence eventual publication. Weigel anticipates that within the next ‘two years or so’, a public preprint review will become the default. And in line with RR:C19’s New York Times experience, he adds: ‘By allowing reviews to be attached to your preprint, you can show a journalist that your work has been reviewed and there’s a higher chance that the world will take notice.’ In the meantime, eLife has been instructing its editors and reviewers to write reviews for a public audience. ‘We’ve been working very hard on our reviews – reviews for the public need to be written in a different way than those for just the author,’ says Weigel. ‘New guidelines for review start with an evaluation summary... these are going to be so much easier for someone from outside of research to understand.’ Weigel also reckons preprint review will be significantly faster than traditional peer review – and he is certain review quality will not suffer. ‘We have a large cadre of senior editors who are committed, as well as amazing staff... not all journals have this luxury, which is why we can afford to be bolder,’ he says. ‘Initially we will need to work with reviewers to do things differently, but once other journals see this works well, habits are going to change.’ With ‘publish then review’ in place,


Weigel and eLife colleagues hope to eventually create a system of curation around preprints that replaces journal titles as the primary indicator of perceived research quality. ‘Of course we believe in peer review


and for a while we hope our [publish then review] model will co-exist with traditional peer review,’ says Weigel. ‘But in 20 years I believe this will all move to the publish then review and curating model,’ he adds. ‘It’s down to culture change. A new generation of scientists, students and postdoctoral researchers are getting used to putting their research onto preprint servers.’ That change aside, who will pay for


these emerging models of preprint review? While MIT Press’s Lindsay is keen to extend preprint review to other fields, primarily climate change, he does wonder where future funds will come from. ‘The Patrick J McGovern Foundation has been incredibly generous but we are still working on a sustainable business model that will allow us to keep Rapid Reviews going,’ he says. And eLife finds itself in a similar


predicament – the publisher is a not-for- profit business but has expenses. ‘How to make money out of all of this really is the elephant in the room,’ says


@researchinfo | www.researchinformation.info g


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