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that policymakers can use the findings to develop policies. Michele Avissar-Whiting (right), editor-in- chief of preprint server Research Square, noted it was the recent Zika and Ebola outbreaks that first prompted funders of medical research to push for preprint sharing for emergency medical situations. And this has been particularly helpful with the advent of COVID-19 and the need to share findings quickly about symptoms, how it is spread, characterisation of the virus and the emergence of new variants. ‘If there’s one silver lining to this last


couple of years it’s been that it forced people’s hand on [preprints]. It just would have been insane if we had adhered to the timelines and the restrictions around releasing findings that are imposed by the traditional system. It would have been crazy to wait three months, six months, a year to publish a sequence. Preprints kind-of saved the day but they also showed that it doesn’t need to be an emergency-only protocol.’ She added that the rapid progress with


COVID-19 responses, aided by preprint availability, could be replicated to speed up the process of understanding and finding treatments for other illnesses, such as cancer.


Beyond health The potential of sharing preprints goes beyond the rapid exchange of health information, according to Joy Owango, executive director of Kenya-based Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa). TCC Africa is working with AfricArXiv to ensure the continental preprint archive, which was launched in 2018 and now includes submissions from 33 countries in Africa (see map), is sustainable. ‘When it comes to preprints in Africa,


we are looking at research visibility, data sovereignty, and promoting indigenous knowledge. All submitted research items (manuscripts, datasets, slide decks, research reports and proposals) get persistent identifiers to establish priority of discovery to the African authors. AfricArXiv is open to submissions of research items in any language relevant to the continent, including Setswana, Amharic and Igbo, as well as all the African Union languages – French, Swahili, Arabic, Portuguese [and] English. We finally have a platform that is sharing our research output with the world, beating the notion that if research is not in English, it is not accessible.’ AfricArXiv has been well received by


researchers, she continued: ‘They are interested in the services the platform offers; it’s free for individuals and can be used for research dissemination in a way that is complementing journal publishing


www.researchinformation.info | @researchinfo


with immediate effect for research visibility and reputation building.’ She gave the example of Kenya,


where the academic regulatory body, Commission of University Education, made it mandatory for every Masters’ and PhD student to publish before they graduate. ‘The staggering fees for article processing charges (APC) at many journals led to an unfortunate rise in predatory journal publishing,’ she said. ‘It just skyrocketed, and then the stress of going through submission to acceptance – it can be six months, one year – and if you end up publishing in a predatory journal, that leads to a loss in reputation for the researcher and often the affiliated institution alike.’ Using preprint archiving as part of the


manuscript submission process to a journal is a game changer; preprints are assigned Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), along with an open license to the manuscripts and other research items to make them citable; and downloads and citations can be measured for bibliometric analyses. She adds: ‘This gives a level of confidence and ease to the researchers as they identify potential certified and affordable journals to publish in. The use of preprint servers in the publishing process, especially if linked with institutional repositories, can strengthen the relationship between librarians and research offices within universities.’ Avissar-Whiting agreed about the impact of preprints on researchers: ‘They’ve


“It has been recent public health crises that have really propelled the practice of preprint sharing’”


introduced researchers to a new way of doing things. One of the main reasons they post the preprint to begin is that they have been toiling away on this research and have really only consulted with the people in their nearby lab group, so they are curious what the world thinks of what they’ve done and want an honest assessment of it.’ Research Square’s users – both authors


and readers – are distributed around the world (see map). But Avissar-Whiting observed that preprints have not yet been embraced everywhere, noting that sharing of preprints is not currently common practice in some countries. Pattinson hopes for preprints to be


embraced everywhere: ‘For a genuinely inclusive system you have an opportunity for everyone [globally] to post their work alongside one another, and then the review and curation happens on top, so they have this level playing field. The opportunity for more inclusive systems is a key driver for why we’re doing this, but it is hard.’ At the moment, he explained, ‘the people


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