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What are Preprints, and How Do They Benefit Authors?

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Preprints are research papers shared before peer review. Here we discuss the benefits to authors including rapid credit, visibility & feedback.

Updated on March 29, 2018

Most researchers don't share their work until after it's been published in a journal. Due to lengthy publication times, this can result in delays of months, sometimes years. Authors are understandably frustrated by the amount of time it takes to share their research & reap the benefits of a published, citable research article.

But what if you could put post your manuscript online while it's going through peer review so that your peers and colleagues can see what you're working on? That's the idea behind preprints, and more and more researchers are using them for exactly this purpose.

Definition of a preprint

A preprint is a full draft research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed. Most preprints are given a digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be cited in other research papers.

A preprint is a full draft of a research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed.

Benefits of preprints

Preprints achieve many of the goals of journal publishing, but within a much shorter time frame. The biggest benefits fall into 3 areas: credit , feedback , and visibility .

When you post a preprint with your research results, you can firmly stake a claim to the work you've done. If there is any subsequent discussion of who found a particular result first, you can point to the preprint as a public, conclusive record of your data. Most preprints are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which allows your work to become a permanent part of the scholarly record - one that can be referenced in any dispute over who discovered something first.

For these reasons, the US National Institutes of Health and Wellcome Trust , among other funders, allow researchers to cite preprints in their grant applications.

For a complete list of funder policies see here .

In the traditional system, a submitted manuscript receives feedback from 2 or 3 peer reviewers before publication. With a preprint, other researchers can discover your work sooner, potentially pointing out critical flaws or errors, suggest new studies or data that strengthen your argument or even recommend a collaboration that could lead to publication in a more prestigious journal. The feedback can be provided publicly through commenting, or privately through email. Here is one scientist's story about the benefit of sharing his work as a preprint:

Last year I posted a preprint. Doing this set off a chain of events that convinced me I should post a preprint for ALL my manuscripts.Here's my story (1/17)— Dan Quintana (@dsquintana) February 10, 2018

Here's another author's journey from skepticism to loving preprints. By posting a preprint, this author was able to share their research 10 months earlier & it was viewed over 1,500 times in the first 2 months.

“To all researchers out there, I encourage you to stop worrying and love the preprint. Submit your manuscripts, but also read preprints and make comments.”

Visibility (and citations)

Preprints are not the final form of a research paper for most authors. Thankfully, preprints and infrastructure providers like Crossref link to the final published article whenever possible, meaning that your preprint can serve to bring new readers to your published paper. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association saw notable increases in citations and Altmetric scores when authors had posted their work first as a preprint.

Posting a preprint led to a significant increase in Altmetric attention scores and citations for the final published paper.

The citation effect is small, and more studies will be needed to confirm this finding, but the evidence for more attention in news and social media is strong (nearly a 3-fold increase in Altmetric attention scores). The more places you can be discovered by your peers and the public, the more attention your research is likely to get.

Conclusions

Preprints are a small but rapidly growing piece of scholarly communication. They present several strong advantages to improve the way research is shared - including credit for your work, early feedback & increased visibility - and we hope you will consider giving them a try.

A note to readers: AJE is a division of Research Square Company . Our colleagues built and operate the Research Square preprint platform. For more author resources on preprints we encourage you to browse the content on the Research Square Blog .

This article was updated by our team February 2020 .

Ben Mudrak, PhD

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Open Access Publishing

• Common Open Access Myths
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What are Preprints?

A preprint is an early version of an academic article that has been made available by the author for others to read for free online before it has been peer reviewed or published in an academic journal.

What are the Benefits of Preprints?

Publishing an article as a preprint serves several important purposes:

• It allows the information contained in the article to be shared with the academic community more rapidly and openly than traditional publication. The formal journal publication process is often lengthy, and it can take many months for an article to be reviewed and published.
• Research has shown that publishing a journal article as a preprint can  increase citations  to the final peer reviewed article.
• By posting a freely accessible version of an article online, the author has the opportunity to receive comments and reviews by readers that might lead to changes and improvements in the final published draft.
• It can be used by researchers to provide evidence of productivity when applying for jobs or submitting grant proposals, and it can also generally help to establish priority of discovery and ideas.
• Posting an article as a preprint can also particularly  benefit early career researchers  by helping then to find research collaborators, and helping to improving their professional network, which can lead to more opportunities for these researchers.

Things to Keep in Mind About Preprints

• Preprints have not been peer reviewed : While preprints are scholarly articles, they have not yet been formally peer reviewed. Some preprint servers may do a rudimentary check to ensure that submitted content is legitimate scientific/academic research, but they are not checking the reliability and accuracy of information in the article. It is important that those reading and using preprints keep this in mind.
• Some journals might not accept article submissions that were published as preprints: While an increasing number of publishers and journals welcome the submissions of articles that have been released as a preprint, some journals might not accept them. It is important to check the policies of any journal you may wish to submit to before releasing a preprint. The Sherpa Romeo database can be used to learn if publishers and journal support preprinting, and the  Transpose  database provides even more details about journal policies toward preprints. 

Selected Preprint Servers

Below are a few selected preprint servers of relevance to the Longwood community. A comprehensive list of preprint servers (and one that compares server policies) can be found on the ASAPbio website .

Discipline-Specific

• bioRxiv : biology and life sciences (informative  article about bioRxiv , including statistics and a history of the preprint server)
• medRxiv : health sciences/clinical research
• arXiv : physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics ​
• NutriXiv : nutritional sciences (note: NutriXiv is no longer accepting new submissions) ​

Multidisciplinary

• Google Scholar : Indexes preprints from many popular servers, including some of the ones mentioned here.
• OSF Preprints : Supported by the Center for Open Science, OSF is a free and open platform that supports a variety of discipline-specific preprint servers. The OSF search aggregator allows users to search through its own preprint collections and those of other organizations.
• Preprints.org : Multidisciplinary preprint server.
• PrePubMed : An independent effort to index preprints from a variety of sources (including ones mentioned above) that fit the profile of articles which would appear in PubMed, once published.

Preprints and the NIH

The National Institutes of Health specifically  supports the use  and citation of preprints as "interim research projects" to "speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor" of an author's work. NIH notice NOT-OD-17-050 discusses the benefits of preprints and provides guidance for authors on selecting a reliable preprint server to post their articles to. This NIH  blog post also offers additional explanation related to this notice. In brief:

• Authors are encouraged by the NIH to include preprints in their "My Bibliography."
• Authors can then associate grant awards with those preprints by logging on through ERA Commons.
• Authors are asked by the NIH to choose a Creative Commons license to release their preprint under, so that it is easily identified as an openly accessible article. Learn more about different CC licenses from ASAPBio .

To learn about other funder's policies towards preprints, you can consult  https://asapbio.org/funder-policies

Common Questions About Preprints

• "These concerns are valid, but there is good reason to believe that they can be mitigated and managed...[with]...attention and inspection from our scientific community....preprints can be screened before posting to block attempts to propagate misinformation. Furthermore, some preprint servers display disclaimers on the top of each article to make clear that preprints are not validated through peer-review." ( ASAPBio )
• Preprint servers should include a "timestamp indicating when the article appeared, which is usually within 24 hours of submission. This date, along with the preprint itself, is made open access... and thus, anyone can determine the order of priority relative to other published work or, indeed, other preprints. While journals provide an important service of validation through peer review, establishment of priority can be significantly delayed because the work is not public during the process of peer review in most journals." ( Ten Simple Rules )
• "As jobs and grants become very competitive, there is increasing worry...about scooping, ie that their ideas/results will be published by others and that they will not receive proper attribution....Our argument is that this is unlikely, and indeed there is likely be to greater protection and overall fairness in establishing credit for work by submitting both to a preprint server (for fair and timely disclosure) and to a journal (for validation by peer review)." ( ASAPBio )
• "Certainly, the peer review process can add significant value to the work, pointing out errors or areas for improvement. Nevertheless, authors must stand behind their submitted preprint, because it is a public disclosure (and hence a citable entity), albeit a non-peer-reviewed one. Even without peer review, their scientific colleagues will be reading and judging the work, and the authors’ reputations are at stake." ( Ten Simple Rules )
• This will help the journal and preprint repositories connect your preprint to the final published article.
• Also, since plagiarism detection software will pick up preprints as a match, the journal will more easily be able to review those reports if they know you have published a preprint. 
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A guide to preprinting for early-career researchers

Cassandra l. ettinger.

1 Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA

Madhumala K. Sadanandappa

2 Department of Molecular and Systems Biology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

Kıvanç Görgülü

3 Comprehensive Cancer Center Munich, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, 81675, Munich, Germany

Karen L. Coghlan

4 George C. Gordon Library, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA

Kenneth K. Hallenbeck

5 TerraPrime, Danvers, MA 01923, USA

Iratxe Puebla

6 ASAPbio, Cambridge, UK

Associated Data

The use of preprints, research manuscripts shared publicly before completing the traditional peer-review process, is becoming a more common practice among life science researchers. Early-career researchers (ECRs) benefit from posting preprints as they are shareable, citable, and prove productivity. However, preprinting a manuscript involves a discussion among all co-authors, and ECRs are often not the decision-makers. Therefore, ECRs may find themselves in situations where they are interested in depositing a preprint but are unsure how to approach their co-authors or advisor about preprinting. Leveraging our own experiences as ECRs, and feedback from the research community, we have constructed a guide for ECRs who are considering preprinting to enable them to take ownership over the process and to raise awareness about preprinting options. We hope that this guide helps ECRs to initiate conversations about preprinting with co-authors and encourage them to preprint their future research.

Summary: Are you an early-career researcher considering preprinting, but unsure how to approach conversations about the possibility? Here, we discuss preprinting and provide tips to enable you to take ownership over the process.

Introduction

Preprints have attracted the attention of life scientists due to their growth in recent years and their role in facilitating the prompt sharing of research findings related to the COVID-19 pandemic ( Fraser et al., 2021 ). Preprints support the rapid dissemination of research, accelerate scientific progress, and directly benefit individual researchers, particularly early-career researchers (ECRs) including undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, research associates, research scientists, junior group leaders, staff scientists, and other researchers. In addition to offering more control over how and when to share research work compared to publication at a journal, preprints enable researchers to present their research contributions to funding agencies and hiring committees while the manuscript is undergoing the editorial process at a journal.

Though ECRs are often interested in open science and preprints ( Sarabipour et al., 2019 ; Wolf et al., 2021 ), many find themselves in situations where the decision on how to publish their research does not lie solely with them. Whether to preprint a manuscript involves a discussion among co-authors, and the ECR's advisor, the group leader, or the corresponding author will often make the final decision. Therefore, ECRs may find themselves in a situation where they would like to preprint but are unsure how to approach their advisor about preprinting. Drawing on our own experiences as ECRs and feedback from the research community, we have constructed the following guide for ECRs interested in preprinting their research. In this guide, we focus on: (1) what preprints are and current trends in the life sciences, (2) how to approach conversations about preprints with co-authors and advisors, (3) common concerns about preprinting, (4) practical steps for depositing preprints, and (5) how to get involved with preprints more broadly. Besides raising awareness, we hope that the resources and suggestions in this article will be informative and helpful to ECRs in understanding the advantages of preprints.

Do your research: what is a preprint?

A preprint is defined as a full draft version of a research manuscript shared publicly prior to the peer-review process ( Tennant et al., 2018 preprint; Mudrack, 2020 ). Posting a preprint serves as a public, permanent disclosure of one's research. In patent terms it would serve as prior art, assigning a date in the scholarly record for any subsequent discussion of who found a particular result first. Preprints are assigned a persistent identifier, most commonly a digital object identifier number (DOI), which allows them to become a permanent part of the scholarly record ( International DOI Foundation, 2021 ). The DOI records metadata for ease of discoverability. Many funders, such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US, the European Research Council, or the Australian Research Council, now allow preprint citations in grant applications or reports ( Kaiser, 2017 ; Watson, 2021 ). The preprint can be cited in subsequent papers furthering the scholarly record and making research results available in a timely manner.

Preprints can enhance the reachability and visibility of research findings, as they are not associated with access barriers ( Fraser et al., 2020 ). Thus, preprints enable open science as the servers are free-to-use and free-to-access, thereby facilitating early discovery and global public engagement ( Maggio et al., 2018 ; UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, 2021 ). Preprints also support an international and equitable scientific community: there is no paywall, which means that researchers can read and cite work they otherwise would not be able to access due to barriers caused by journal subscription fees.

Preprints are not new to the research community. In the 1960s, the NIH created the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs) to circulate copies of biological preprints. The IEGs ended up growing into seven different groups with a membership of more than 3600 participants and distributed over 2500 documents. However, by 1967 the IEGs were abandoned after several journal publishers refused to accept articles circulated as preprints ( Cobb, 2017 ). Physicists experimented with similar models, and in 1991, arXiv was founded as a repository for manuscripts in the physical sciences ( ArXiv, 2021 ). While physicists adopted preprints to disseminate work with colleagues, preprints in the life sciences did not take off until the 2010s, with the start of bioRxiv and initial signs of support by funders and publishers ( Puebla et al., 2022 ).

Preprint servers and landscape

Preprint adoption in the life sciences started with the launch of bioRxiv in November 2013. Currently, over 50 preprint servers cover a wide range of disciplines; for a list of preprint servers relevant to life sciences, biomedical, and clinical research, refer to the ASAPbio webpage ( https://asapbio.org/preprint-servers ; Kirkham et al., 2020 ). While these servers follow different governance models, they are operated by academic communities, academic institutions, or publishers. Similar to journal publications, searching for preprints is straightforward, as Google Scholar and Europe PMC index many preprint servers including bioRxiv, Research Square, and medRxiv. This means that many of the ways that one uses to keep up with published literature (for tips see Pain, 2016 ) can also alert you to the latest preprints.

The number of cumulative submissions to preprint servers over time demonstrates increased acceptance of preprinting among life science researchers ( Tennant et al., 2018 preprint); for the evolution of life science preprints in that time period, see the data indexed by Europe PMC ( Europe PMC, 2021 ). bioRxiv, the largest biology preprint server, had cumulatively published over 200,000 preprints by early 2022 ( Fig. 1 A; bioRxiv reporting, 2021 ). Their sister server medRxiv launched in June 2019 for health sciences, now hosts over 40,000 preprints ( Fig. 1 A). Researchers from over 170 countries have deposited preprints in bioRxiv, with the majority of preprints originating from the USA and the UK ( Fig. 1 B) ( Abdill et al., 2020 ). Previous studies looking at the country distribution of preprints before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, also highlight that the US, China and countries in Western Europe are the most represented in bioRxiv and medRxiv ( Abdill et al., 2020 ; Fraser et al., 2021 ). Disparities in preprint deposition across countries relative to their overall scientific output suggest that geographical barriers may exist to preprint adoption ( Abdill et al., 2020 ).

(A) Monthly new submissions to bioRxiv (orange - November 2013 to December 2021) and medRxiv (grey - June 2019 to December 2021). (B) A heat map showing the country-wise distribution of preprints in both bioRxiv and medRxiv based on the institutional affiliation of the corresponding author. The color coding uses a log scale. (Data curated from bioRxiv and medRxiv- from servers launch untill August 2021).

Consideration of preprint servers based on discipline, scope, policies, and readership is relevant to inform where to deposit your preprint, and in turn to maximize visibility for the work and opportunities for feedback from researchers in your specific field. Data suggests that the adoption of preprints varies from one discipline to another within the life sciences. Neuroscience, microbiology, bioinformatics, cell biology and evolutionary biology are among the fields most extensively represented in bioRxiv ( Abdill and Blekhman, 2019 ; bioRxiv reporting, 2021 ), whereas infectious diseases, epidemiology, and public and global health preprints are strongly represented in medRxiv ( bioRxiv reporting, 2021 ). The strongest disciplines in medRxiv closely overlap with those relevant to COVID-19 research, as many researchers shared their preliminary data related to COVID-19 in the form of preprints to help inform the response to the pandemic. During the initial months of the pandemic there was not only a surge in the deposition of preprints but also in public engagement with preprinted COVID-19-related research. COVID-19 preprints also received more citations, reactions on social media and coverage in the press compared to non-COVID-19 preprints ( Fraser et al., 2021 ).

Engagement with preprints can also vary according to the server and whether it is predominantly linked to a journal's submission process ( Kirkham et al., 2020 ). Researchers seeking to share their work with their communities before or in parallel to journal submission may post to community-operated servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv or servers that serve regional communities such as AfricArxiv, RINarxiv or IndiaRxiv. On the other hand, some researchers post their preprint upon journal submission, by opting into services offered by journals to post at a preprint server their publisher runs or has a partnership with. Examples of this type of service include Cell Sneak Peak and Preprints with the Lancet (owned by Elsevier) offered by journals in the Cell and Lancet families, or journals in the Springer Nature portfolio, which offer authors the option to deposit at Research Square, a server partnered with the publisher.

I am thinking about preprinting my paper - how should I approach it with my advisors and co-authors?

Talking to your advisor, colleagues, and co-authors.

So, after considering all the above, you would like to preprint your paper; how to get started? As a first step, have a conversation with your advisor about preprinting your next paper. If you are unsure about where they stand regarding preprints, you can start by asking about their views on preprinting. If you have these discussions with your advisor or co-authors by email, we have provided some draft email structures to help you ( Fig. 2 ; Text S1 ). Here are a few important things to consider:

Draft email to one ’ s advisor. An email template to help with initiating conversations about preprinting with one's advisor. We have included the same template and a template for emailing co-authors in text format in the supplementary materials ( Text S1 ).

• Keep it simple.
• Familiarize yourself with your institution or funder policy for communicating the work. Do they encourage or require preprints?
• Find out your advisor's priorities for sharing the group's work.
• Provide examples of other researchers in your field who have preprinted.
• Offer additional resources or seek further input about using preprints.

If you are meeting with your advisor in person, even if you come prepared with all the answers, remember that your advisor may have questions that you did not anticipate or may still be unsure of what might be best for the work after your conversation. They may need time to mull over the options and get back to you; not everything needs to be settled in one conversation. You could offer to gather more information on preprinting or their specific concerns to share with them and then continue the conversation at the next meeting. All authors must be on board to preprint the manuscript, so having these meetings early on can leave time for you to address concerns.

In addition, consider the language and construction of the argument that you will use in your preprinting conversations. Try to use ‘I’ language when discussing your goals and motivations and remind all parties how this aligns with your values or will benefit your career. If someone has a different opinion on preprinting than you do, investigate this opinion further by asking them how they reached that conclusion. Come prepared with resources to share and be aware of common concerns (see below and Table 1 ), but do not pressure your advisor or colleagues to decide right away. Be ready to compromise and table the discussion to be followed up with in the future.

Table 1.

Examples of concerns or questions that may come up in conversation with your co-authors about preprints, along with information and considerations to raise in response when making a case for preprinting

Construct your argument - what concerns may come up in conversations about preprints?

Several concerns or issues may come up in conversations with co-authors, colleagues, advisors, or others in the community. These issues might be influenced by research field, career stage, or experience. For example, those working in medical fields may raise concerns about sharing findings that may affect patients before peer-review; the stakes in patient treatment and public health are higher than in other fields. Preprint opinion may also differ depending on the level of acceptance of preprints in a discipline. For instance, in research fields with strong preprint adoption, it is less likely to receive the response ‘I did not see your work!’ when you preprint. On the other hand, concerns about visibility or scooping may be more significant for fields with relatively lower adoption or acceptance of preprints.

We outline below ( Table 1 ) some of the concerns or questions that may arise during discussions about preprints. In addition, we explore two of the most common themes in greater detail: scooping and sharing the work before the journal peer-review process.

Concern #1: I'll get scooped

A common concern among researchers is the risk of scooping – that another competing group will see the preprint and rush to publish their results in a journal before the preprint authors can do so themselves, thereby depriving the preprint authors of the career benefits of publishing in their target journal ( Bourne et al., 2017 ). Interestingly, there is no evidence that the prevalence of scooping in preprints is higher than in the context of journal publications. For instance, in the 2019 bioRxiv survey, only 0.7% of respondents indicated that preprinting prevented them from publishing in their journal of choice ( Sever et al., 2019 preprint).

Most remarkably, researchers have used their preprints as an opportunity to initiate collaborations with other groups in the field or to coordinate the publication of their work together, thereby avoiding concerns about priority claims. For example, Dr Josh Hardy discussed how upon seeing a preprint from another group, they got in touch with the preprint authors. The two groups coordinated the journal publication of their respective papers, which ended up appearing in the same journal ( Hardy, 2021 ).

Preprinting allows researchers much more control of when they disseminate their work and is thus an opportunity to prevent being scooped while waiting for the paper to be published in a journal. In addition, preprints provide an avenue for researchers in rapidly moving fields to promptly share their work with their community, where the delay associated with peer review may come at the cost of priority. In the bioRxiv survey, 28% of respondents stated that preprints helped them stake a priority claim in their field ( Sever et al., 2019 , preprint).

Preprints enhance visibility

Visibility is an important element in the context of scooping concerns: preprints must be readily discoverable by researchers in the field, which in turn, allows attributing credit to the authors. Will the preprint be seen by colleagues in the field? Or is there a risk that the preprint may be overlooked, and competitors may not cite it?

In the bioRxiv survey, 74% of respondents stated that preprinting increased awareness of their research ( Sever et al., 2019 , preprint). Preprints are readily searchable online, as indexing services and literature search tools increasingly incorporate them (Scopus, Google Scholar, Europe PMC, and Crossref all index preprints). In addition, authors can quickly disseminate preprints on social media platforms. For example, Twitter plays an important role in increasing the visibility of preprints, with many research groups sharing their latest preprints via Twitter or commenting on colleagues’ latest preprinted work ( Chiarelli et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, social media platforms can allow scientists to immediately measure the community's reactions and engagement with the work by the number of tweets, re-tweets, and likes the preprint receives. Many authors now post Twitter threads highlighting the main findings of their preprints or journal articles. In fact, before writing this guide we used a Twitter thread with polls to gauge ECR interest in preprinting, with 92.5% of respondents recommending preprinting to ECRs ( n =40) ( Fig. S1 , Table S1 ). If you are new to social media, there are several existing guides for scientists that can help you get started ( Bik and Goldstein, 2013 ; Heemstra, 2020 ; Cheplygina et al., 2020 ).

In addition, studies have shown that posting preprints results in more attention on social media and a higher number of citations for the article once it appears in a journal ( Fu and Hughey, 2019 ). Altmetric scores are generally higher for articles deposited as preprints; journal publications that have associated bioRxiv preprints receive more mentions on blogs and Wikipedia than non-deposited articles, as well as more mentions in Twitter or Mendeley ( Abdill and Blekhman, 2019 ; Fraser et al., 2020 ). COVID-19 preprints have also been widely reported in the lay media ( Fleerackers et al., 2022 ). The early accrual of citations for the journal publication suggests that the community had already taken note of the preprint, which gave them a chance to consider the work as part of their own research between the preprint appearance and the journal publication.

Preprints establish priority

An important step in the research process is to disseminate your findings to the scientific community, and in turn, be able to claim credit for the work. Recognition for research productivity is essential to establishing a reputation in the field, acquiring grants, and career progress. A preprint provides a permanent time-stamped record for the research findings in a much shorter timeline than a journal publication. Thus, when time is critical (e.g. when completing your thesis or finishing a project before moving to another position), preprinting can greatly benefit ECRs.

In the coming years, life scientists might use preprints as a channel to establish priority, which has been established practice in the physics community for years ( Vale and Hyman, 2016 ). In support of this idea, several publishers such as EMBO Press, PLOS, and eLife have ‘ scoop protection’ policies that recognize the date of the preprint deposition as the date at which their policy applies. The scooping-protection policy stipulates that from the date of the preprint, if another publication appears reporting similar findings, that would not impact the consideration of the paper submitted to their journals.

Researchers often worry about the potential risk of scooping when they present their preliminary findings at conferences or symposiums. Attendees could use the information they heard at the conference and scoop the presenter. As the information would have been available only to the conference attendees, there is limited audience to vouch for who has priority over that work and it would not be easy to establish who did what and when. Depositing a preprint before the conference presentation records the priority claim with a time-stamp and provides protection from scooping.

Preprints are citable

A tangible benefit of preprints is that they are citable and can prove productivity for prospective funders. Many funding agencies now have policies that allow citing preprints as part of grant applications and reports (more information on funder policies at asapbio.org/funder-policies). We expect to see more funding agencies update their policies, recognizing the importance of preprints in the future. Besides funders, several research institutions have started to include preprints in their processes for hiring and promotion (see asapbio.org/university-policies).

Concern #2: My work hasn't been peer reviewed yet

Another common concern that may arise in conversations around preprints is sharing work before peer review. Some researchers worry about disseminating their findings before completing the traditional peer-review process, which provides feedback on the work and can also address any errors before the broader circulation of the manuscript. It is important to note that the preprint should be carefully prepared before depositing it to the server, similar to journal manuscript preparation. To this end, ensure that all co-authors check the paper before posting and consider receiving feedback from colleagues prior to submitting the paper to the preprint server.

Preprint feedback focuses on the science and not on journal fit

An advantage of posting a preprint is that feedback received from the scientific community can help to improve the manuscript and is independent of subjective evaluations about journal fit. Incorporating community feedback into the manuscript can even increase the chances of eventual publication. A preprint brings more eyes and a broader range of perspectives to the paper than the traditional two or three reviewers from the journal's peer-review. Thus, it can provide a robust mechanism to identify any issues before a manuscript enters the journal's editorial process and valuable input on specific aspects including the statistical analyses, methodology, or the interpretations of the data. Importantly, preprint servers allow authors to submit new versions of the preprint. It is straightforward for authors to post a revision as a new preprint version after incorporating additional work or correcting any oversights. The mechanisms for preprint versioning allow updates or corrections to the paper in a faster and simpler path compared to corrections to the article's version of record at a journal.

Preprints enable journal-independent peer-review

Several platforms offer feedback and evaluations on preprints, and in some of these the peer-review process runs similarly to the traditional journal peer review. For example, Review Commons, an initiative by EMBO Press and ASAPbio, allows researchers to submit their preprint for peer review prior to journal submission. Review Commons has partnered with 17 affiliate journals — the Company of Biologists’s journals, EMBO Press journals, PLOS, eLife , Journal of Cell Biology , and Molecular Biology of the Cell — that have agreed to use the reviews provided by Review Commons to inform their evaluation and editorial decision, thus avoiding multiple review rounds. Review Commons requires the authors to post a preprint before submitting the manuscript to an affiliate journal.

Services such as Review Commons and Peer Community In - which also completes evaluation of preprints - involve the review of preprints in a process coordinated by an editor or similar role. On the other hand, other platforms, such as PREreview and PubPeer, allow any community member to provide feedback on the preprint ( Table 2 ). In addition, many preprint servers offer commenting features that allow readers to contribute comments on preprints in a variety of formats; such comments may involve praise for the work, queries to the authors, comments on specific aspects of the study, summaries from journal club discussions or even copies of full reviews for the preprint ( Malički et al., 2021 ).

Table 2.

Preprint commentary and review platforms and their characteristics. Information for the different platforms is based on the records available at ReImagine Review.

Public comments posted on the preprint can also help inform and positively shape the editor's decision upon manuscript submission to a journal. Some journals such as Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Open Biology have appointed preprint editors who check the latest preprints to solicit submissions to their journals ( Neiman et al., 2021 ).

Preprints generally change little upon journal publication

A majority of the manuscripts posted as preprints go on to be published in a journal; a study of bioRxiv preprints found that two thirds of the preprints appeared at a journal within 2 years ( Abdill and Blekhman , 2019 ). Additional studies that have evaluated the content of preprints and their associated journal publications found that the reporting quality in preprints is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles ( Carneiro et al., 2020 ) and that the main content and conclusions changed little between the preprint and the journal publication for the same work ( Brierley et al., 2022 ; Nicholson et al., 2022 ; Zeraatkar et al., 2022 ). These studies suggest that there is no evidence to consider research findings reported via preprints as less trustworthy than journal publications. The peer-review process at journals provides a valuable mechanism to scrutinize research work and identify potential flaws or oversights, but it is important to remember that peer review is not infallible ( Schroter et al., 2008 ), and the ‘peer reviewed’ label does not imply that a particular published finding is reliable; all research works should be critically appraised, whether they appear at a journal, at a preprint server or in another format.

Next steps - how to preprint your paper?

Once you have your co-authors’ green light to preprint the work, here are a few actionable steps to complete the preprint deposition ( Fig. 3 ).

Preprint submission checklist. A suggested checklist to help with preprint submission after having a successful conversation and the green light from advisors and co-authors to preprint.

Preprint server

First, you need to choose a preprint server for your manuscript. Think carefully about your audience and what server will best reach the targeted audience (see above). If you plan to submit the manuscript to a journal, familiarize yourself with the journal's editorial policies about preprints. Check if the journal specifies any preprint servers they accept for preprint deposition, for example, some journals have policies only allowing preprints to be deposited on non-profit servers (e.g. bioRxiv, AfricaArXiv ).

Preprint license

It is also important to think about the license you will apply to the preprint. You have several options - from retaining all rights (i.e. meaning you do not give default permission to reuse the work) to a range of Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which standardize permissions for the type of use allowed for the work (asapbio.org/licensing-faq). A CC BY license allows any type of re-use without requiring permission from the author, providing credit is given to the original author(s). This type of credit is called attribution ( AboutCCLicenses, n.d. ). The CC BY license is the most common type and its designation has been shown to increase citation and visibility of monographs ( Snijder, 2015 ). There are additional license options that can be used to preserve copyright, the more licenses options chosen increases the restrictions on reuse: CC BY-NC (cannot be used for commercial purposes), CC BY-ND (non-derivative, must be shared in its original form) and CC BY-SA (share-alike, if re-used must be published under the same or a more restrictive license). These license options (BY, NC, ND, and SA) can be chosen in combination to retain rights and further specify reuse restrictions (e.g. CC BY-NC-SA, etc). While some preprint servers offer a range of license options (e.g. bioRxiv, medRxiv, OSF Preprints), others require a CC-BY license (e.g. Research Square, preprints.org, SciELO Preprints).

Preprint preparation

In general, preprint servers are format agnostic, meaning they accept a single file of your manuscript in any format (for example, a single PDF file in the formatting style of the journal of your choice!) and then authorship information. You can link the preprint-related data and additional resources deposited in public repositories to your preprint. This may be important if your target journal has an open-data policy (e.g. ASM journals, BMC-series journals) which requires all data and code to be publicly available.

Preprint submission

Now that you've chosen a preprint server, license type, and prepared your manuscript, decide who will submit the manuscript and when it will be submitted. In the bioRxiv survey, authors preferred preprinting either before journal submission (42%) or concurrent to journal submission (37%) ( Sever et al., 2019 preprint). Some journals work with preprint servers, like bioRxiv, to also allow for direct submission of your manuscript to a journal after posting to the preprint server. After the preprint submission, don't forget to share your new preprint on social media ( Heemstra, 2020 ; Cheplygina et al., 2020 )!

If your co-authors aren't interested in preprinting this time...

Irrespective of the field, many researchers are still wary of preprinting, and it is understandable that other authors may have concerns or may need additional time to consider your request. Almost half of the respondents in our Twitter survey who were unable to convince their co-authors to preprint, indicated that their co-authors might be open to preprinting in the future. Offer to continue the conversation another time and suggest to them that it's worth keeping an eye on the latest preprints coming out in your field. You may also suggest you revisit the option of preprinting for another paper where they may view the stakes as less high. If your co-authors are still uninterested, there are still many other ways to get involved with preprints even if you are unable to preprint your current work.

Other ways to get involved with preprints

Beyond providing an opportunity to promptly share your work and get credit for it, preprints also offer other benefits to your scientific career. For example, several communities with an interest in open science also support preprints. Getting involved with one or more of those groups can be a way to expand your professional network and connect with other researchers in your discipline.

ASAPbio has an international community of researchers and others in the science communication space, who drive initiatives to support preprints and interact and support each other. ASAPbio also runs a fellows program allowing participants to learn more about preprints and develop skills to drive discussions about the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. eLife coordinates an ambassadors program, which aims to bring together ECRs interested in promoting change in academic culture and science communication. preLights, an initiative of the Company of Biologists, provides a platform for ECRs to highlight preprints they find of interest and is another way to engage with preprints.

If you are interested in developing your review skills, several options are currently available. Preprint journal clubs are an excellent opportunity to keep up to date with the latest research in your field and connect with others. If you are part of a local journal club, you can suggest incorporating preprints, if they are not already covered. If you do not have a local journal club, you can explore online options, e.g. PREreview coordinates live-streamed preprint journal clubs.

We hope that this informational guide will be useful for readers, especially ECRs, interested in preprinting their research. In addition to exploring the current landscape of preprints in the life sciences, we have discussed common concerns around preprints that might come up in conversations with colleagues. The tips provided in this article are useful for having conversations with advisors and co-authors about preprinting, including email templates and practical steps needed to preprint your work.

In this piece, we may have missed many tips and suggestions, but as preprints continue to grow, so will our collective expertise as well as the evidence around the use of preprints for science communication. We are excited to watch the preprinting community continue to grow and look forward to seeing more preprint engagement from ECRs in the coming years.

Supplementary Material

Acknowledgements.

We thank ASAPbio for hosting the ASAPbio Fellows program and we are appreciative of the support received from the 2021 cohort of ASAPbio Fellows. We further thank bioRxiv and medRxiv for providing data on the country distribution of preprints at their servers. We are also grateful to Jessica Polka (ORCID: 0000-0001-6610-9293) and Samantha Hindle (ORCID: 0000-0002-3708-3546) for helpful suggestions on this manuscript. KG is supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (Project no: 492436553).

Competing interests

IP is an employee of ASAPbio, a non-profit organization promoting the productive use of preprints.

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What is a preprint, preprints are research papers shared before peer review, uploaded by their authors to a public preprint platform. we discuss the benefits of preprints to authors, including rapid credit, visibility, and feedback., posted march 16, 2022 by phillip bogdan, what are preprints.

Most researchers can’t share their work until after it’s been published in a journal, which can take months or even years. Preprints offer a rapid and evolving solution.

A preprint is a full and complete draft of a research manuscript that you upload and share to a public repository (preprint server) before formal peer review.

Most preprints are given a digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be cited in other research papers. The DOI provides a “public timestamp” that establishes the primacy of your work. In other words, these are your ideas and you acquire valid proof quickly.

In this way, you can post your manuscript online and get critical feedback to validate, challenge, and ultimately improve your work.

Researchers are increasingly using preprints. And publishers are increasingly accepting them. Especially with the advent of COVID-19, the need to expedite research and get it into the community has grown incrementally. Preprint servers became deluged with COVID-related articles and new ideas emerged rapidly. Some were shot down, while others progressed.

Here we look back on how we got here, and why preprints are changing the publishing world – mostly for the better.

A brief history of preprints

Preprints aren’t new. In fact, they’ve been circulating in physics circles since the 1940s – much of that time in paper form – to communicate the latest scientific knowledge.

1st revolution

The first revolution for preprint distribution came in the 1960s, when the Stanford (University) Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) began printing and circulating the latest preprints in its SPIRES-HEP database to a worldwide network of members via distribution lists.  

2nd revolution

The second revolution for preprints came in 1978 with the arrival of LaTeX Source Document files . Through these .TeX files, preprints could be electronically produced and distributed across early versions of the internet.

These files, which combined plain text with symbols and mathematical expressions, could eventually be shared via email and then rendered and printed at their destination.

3rd revolution

The third revolution for preprints came in 1991, when Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg launched arXiv, the first modern-day preprint server . For the first time, researchers could upload, search, and retrieve preprints in one central online location. 

arXiv revolutionized research communication by making preliminary research papers widely discoverable. Through this platform, researchers could also review and comment on preprints. arXiv also helped introduce the concept of open-access research and open publication.

This open-access movement for research has gained much traction in recent years. 

Leading preprint servers 

There are now more than 60 preprint platforms, and the number is continually growing. Most preprint servers were launched within the last 10 years, but the oldest, arXiv, is over 30 years old.

These are the more robust and successful preprint servers, their launch dates, and their owners and aims.

• AfricArXiv –  Launched in community-led A free and fully open resource digital archive for African research that spans all scientific fields. It was launched in 2018 by a small group of enthusiasts. 
• arXiv – The world’s first preprint server, launched in 1991 and owned by Cornell University. The not-for-profit arXIv server hosts research in the fields of physics, math, computer science, statistics, and other related quantitative disciplines.
• Authorea – A for-profit platform owned by Wiley. The platform was launched in 2017 to help authors “discover and publish cutting edge, open research.” 
• bioRxiv – A free preprint server that houses research in the life sciences. It was launched in 2013 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
• ChemRxiv – A not-for-profit “submission, distribution and archive service for unpublished preprints in chemistry and related areas.” ChemRxiv was launched in 2017 by a consortium of academic societies in chemistry.
• F1000 Research – F1000 Research Ltd. started this open research publishing platform for life scientists. The server offers “immediate publication of articles and other research outputs without editorial bias.”
• Jxiv - Launched in 2022 by the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Jxiv is the first Japan-based preprint server. Its functions: to make preprints openly available, to support the rapid-release of research results, and to promote open science.
• Preprints.org – This server was launched in 2020 by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). As the name of the organization implies, this nonprofit server accepts manuscripts from all fields of research and makes this research immediately available after submission.
• medRxiv – A preprint server for research in the medical, health sciences, and clinical fields. It was launched in 2019 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
• MetaArXiv – An interdisciplinary archive of articles owned by The Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences. MetaArXiv’s stated purpose is to improve research transparency and reproducibility. It was launched in 2017.
• Research Square – A preprint server launched in 2018 by Research Square Company. This for-profit preprint server allows authors to post their manuscripts for free. Preprints can be posted directly on Research Square or through its In Review system, which allows authors to post their preprints while submitting to more than 530 journals. 
• SSRN – This for-profit preprint server owned by Elsevier is tied to The Lancet family of journals, allowing authors to post their preprints as they are submitted for peer review. 

Visit ASAPbio’s preprint server directory for a more comprehensive list and descriptions of preprint servers.

How is preprinting different from traditional journal articles?

Timing of release, methods of review, accessibility, and other factors help define the differences between preprints and conventional publication in journals.

Posting vs. publishing

Preprints are typically “posted”, or “prepublished”, for public view before peer review begins.

Traditional journal articles are only considered published after they’re peer reviewed and shared with readers in a journal. 

Assignment of DOIs before publication vs. after publication

Most preprint servers accept and post manuscripts within one week of submission, and sometimes immediately. All of these preprinted manuscripts are time-stamped using digital object identifiers , or DOIs, managed through infrastructure providers like Crossref .

Through these DOIs, preprints are made a citable part of the official scholarly public record: the same benefit you’ll get by publishing in a journal.

For traditional journal articles, the peer review process can take months, or even years. The author receives credit for their work through DOIs when these articles are published in journals. 

Peer review vs. community review 

Traditional academic journals go through peer review. In this process you submit your manuscript to a journal editor. If it passes their approval, it’s then sent  for one or more academic peers to check it.

Peer reviewers typically are experts in the manuscript’s subject. They judge whether the manuscript should be accepted for publication, sent back for minor or major revisions, or rejected.

This peer review process has been considered the gold standard for ensuring quality in publication for more than three centuries. But  a journal’s peer review and endorsement aren’t the only elements of credibility that a paper might have. Peer review also has its shortcomings. 

Preprints are often posted to generate commentary from other scientists in the field. The comments can be either on the preprint server itself, on dedicated preprint review platforms, or on social media. Community reviews like the following can contribute important context and call out the strengths and weaknesses of the paper. Click here to view the full preprint connected to the community review below.

Advantages of preprints

Preprints and preprinting offer several benefits to authors, plus any others who read them, including:

• Early citations : The ability to establish credit before publication in journals through DOIs, which allow other researchers to cite preprints even before publication in a peer reviewed journal.
• Feedback before submission : Preprint servers let you publicly post your manuscript and via social media invite others to review it. Colleagues in science and research can review or comment publicly on the server or more privately via email.
• Visibility and transparency : Preprints are fully open access and discoverable by anyone. As such, preprint servers are excellent venues for exposing researchers who steal others’ work, as well as predatory publishers. 
• Rapid communication of research : Preprints are posted within days, as opposed to the four-month average wait for publication in peer reviewed journals.

A critical step in building trust, with clear advantages

Research Square Editor in Chief Michele Avissar-Whiting outlined how preprint reviews are a critical step toward building trust, transparency, and speed in scholarly communication. View the video here:

There are five clear reasons to share your work early on a preprint platform.

Limitations of preprints

While preprints have many positive facets to them, they also have their limitations:

• Preprinted articles haven’t undergone the scrutiny of traditional peer review. 
• Multiple versions of the same preprint can be created as they’re improved. Some viewers may mistake an older version of a preprint for the current version.
• Preprints may be mistaken for peer-reviewed papers, especially by those who aren’t trained scientists, such as the general media. This could help foster the spread of misinformation.

Useful links and resources on preprints

• ASAPbio’s Preprint Resource Center , offering infographics, frequently asked questions , and other useful information on preprints.
• A collection of PowerPoint slides covering preprints, peer review, and transparency in science hosted by ASAPbio.
• A collection of videos on the subject of preprints.
• Europe PMC’s updated charts and graphs showing the growth of preprints and preprint servers over time. The page also includes some basic information on preprints. 

Learn more about the Research Square preprint platform and its associated tools and services . 

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The Pros and Cons of Preprints

Preprints are drafts of scholarly articles and research papers that are made publicly available prior to peer review, meaning that researchers can get their work out quickly and receive feedback at a relatively early stage. There’s plenty more uses and benefits to them, including that they’re citable and open for comments from other researchers.

There are some limitations to preprints, however, including a lack of awareness among the general public and limited acceptance in academic journals and publication platforms.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of preprints here.

Preprints pros

·       a way for researchers to get results out quickly.

Preprints are most useful for researchers. Researchers can share their results by publishing their initial drafts and receive feedback on their findings from other researchers across the world. This can be helpful because a wider pool of researchers providing feedback means that any flaws in research are more likely to be noticed before the publication of full research papers.

Feedback can come in other forms, including as recommendations for new research directions. As preprints are open to comments, they’re perfect for advancing fields in which preliminary results are key. And they might even strengthen the review process given that researchers are able to consider feedback on preprints from researchers across the globe.

·       Crediting innovative research

By making research visible before official publication, researchers with innovative ideas can be suitably credited. The process from finalizing a draft to publishing a peer-reviewed article can be lengthy. Because of this, preprints can help researchers to get results out quicker. This is especially useful if any major delays are experienced during the review process, or if similar research comes out before the publication of full research papers.

·       Preprints are citable 

Preprints receive their own digital object identifier (DOI), meaning that researchers can easily cite preprints. Publishers often provide “ How to Cite ” instructions for anybody looking to reference research from preprints. And because preprints are citable, academics can discuss information and results from preprints within their work.

·       Preprints are screened

Preprints  can come in various forms, including as reviews and case reports. And once preprints are submitted for publication, they are subject to certain checks. For example, at MDPI, preprints undergo a thorough series of checks to make sure they’re reliable. Preprints published through preprints.org, an MDPI initiative, undergo a screening process that includes making sure that basic publication ethics are adhered to, conflicts of interest are disclosed by authors, and that “ no harmful, provocative, controversial, or pseudoscientific statement ” is included.

Preprints cons

·       preprints reliability.

Because preprints aren’t as established yet, it can be difficult to make clear that the information available in preprints isn’t verified in the same way as information in other research articles. As witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, this can lead to problems during major health crises.

The pandemic illustrated both the pros and cons of preprints. Due to the novelty and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people were looking to find out more about the science behind it. While preprints helped researchers to share data about the pandemic at a rapid pace, problems arose as many news outlets picked up on the information. The circulation of preliminary findings as facts meant conflicting information was delivered to the public. This led to issues such as misinformation and lack of trust in the science.

These issues can be solved by making clear that preprints haven’t been peer reviewed, and that the research in preprints is therefore less reliable than the information available in other academic publications. Defining and explaining the purpose of preprints are steps in the right direction.

·       Lack of acceptance and publication of full papers

Despite being about for around 30 years online, preprints only really took off during the COVID-19 pandemic , when fast-paced research became key. The rise in interest since then has led to considerations of the pros and cons of preprints. And they’re most often distributed over the internet as opposed to in the form of paper copies today, following the trend of most academic publications.

However, there is less space made for preprints across journals. Many publishers don’t accept preprints or have certain stipulations for the research published in preprints. For example, when publishing a preprint, researchers should be mindful that some journals prohibit the republication of research included in preprints. If you have any plans to publish your work with a certain journal, double check that you’ll still be able to do this once you’ve published your preprint.

Preprints at MDPI 

So, while preprints offer benefits such as efficiency and collaboration, there are still some issues that need to be worked on. We’ll hopefully see some of these issues resolved as we raise awareness about their functions and purpose.

If you’re interested in publishing your work as a preprint, or want to know more about the process, have a look at the Multidisciplinary Preprints Platform , an MDPI initiative. Here, you can learn more about publishing articles developed from preprints in MDPI journals.

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My correct question is: “How long does a paper stay in the preprint journal before it is accepted and published?”

Hi, A paper can stay published as a preprint and never appear in a journal. If it does get published in a journal, the time depends on how long it takes the journal to publish it, which varies greatly.

I hope this answers your question, Jack

Is the plagiarism generated due to preprint affect the acceptance of journals.

Can my manuscript, currently under review with MDPI, be affected by a previously published manuscript with a DOI as a preprint?

Hello Alzafer,

My understanding is that this is possible. Hope this helps.

I have got this email. It means my paper is excepted or not yet or good indicator?

We are pleased to inform you that we have established a direct connection with “Preprints.org”, a free preprint platform ( https://www.preprints.org ). Your article has been recommended to the Preprints.org

Abdirahman,

Please contact preprints as we do not have access to that information. They will be able to provide you with more details on this question.

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What is a preprint?

In general, a preprint is an author's own original or draft version of their paper before any peer review has taken place and before they publish it - sometimes in a peer-reviewed journal. 

Adding your preprints gives you a great opportunity to start gaining visibility for your work early on and lets you get valuable feedback from your peers. 

Many preprints are available, usually in the form of a .doc file with minimal formatting, before the published version is available. The published version is usually the final, formatted work that you find on a publisher's website. This is the version that most library databases link to. 

What types of research usually have preprint versions?

Articles and book chapters are the most common types, but authors sometimes also  add  preprints of conference papers and posters before they publish them in conference proceedings. 

Why should I consider adding my preprints to ResearchGate?

Adding preprints is a great way to get your work out early. Here's why you should consider adding them:

• Your peers will have early access to your work and can give you  feedback   before you publish
• You  start building an audience for your work  as soon as you finish it (instead of waiting months or even years for it to be published)
• You can get a  free   Digital Object Identifier (DOI)  for your preprint that shows exactly when your work first appeared – this will make sure you get the credit you deserve, and make it easy for others to find and cite your work  
• You can  link your preprint to the final version's page ,   giving you an audience for your final work 
• You can  connect with other researchers  working in the same area  

You can also visit our blog to see why you should consider sharing your preprints with other researchers:  https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/three-reasons-to-share-your-preprints

Am I allowed to share my preprints on ResearchGate? 

Some publishers let authors share copies of their preprints without restrictions, while others allow it, but with limitations. Because publishers and journals differ on what they allow, you should always check your licensing agreement or publisher conditions before you share any of your work. Also, if you’re planning to publish in a journal, check the publisher’s policies to confirm they’ll accept your draft after it’s already been made publicly available. Check out our  Copyright   section for more information on how and where you can share your work. 

Please note:  Publishers that allow sharing of preprints usually require that they aren't formatted to make them appear like the final version of your work. 

How can reading preprints help me with my work?

A preprint is the author's earliest version of their publication, giving you access to brand new research. In most cases, preprints are added to ResearchGate within days of the author finishing their paper. Here's why you should read preprints:

• Keep up with brand new research  and decide on the future direction of your own work 
• Give feedback on early work  before it's published (and identify yourself as an expert)
• You can  connect with your readers  - the people most likely to work in the same area as you.

How do I add a preprint to my profile?

• Go to your  Profile
• Click  Add new  in the top right-hand corner of the page
• Select  Preprint
• Add details about your preprint and choose whether to add a public or private file
• Once you're done, your preprint is available from your profile. 

Note:  You must always make sure you have the right to upload any content to ResearchGate before doing so. For more information see our  Copyright  section.

How do I link my preprint to the publication page for the final version?

As soon as you publish your work, you can link your preprint to the final work's publication page. Here's how:

• Go to the  Research  tab on your profile
• On the left, select  Preprints  and locate your publication
• Click  Add published version  under the preprint title
• Select the published work you want to link to if it's already on ResearchGate, or create a new publication if it's not
• Click  Add published version
• Your published work's page is now linked and accessible directly from your preprint.

This page explains how to publish a preprint, and highlights resources to help you do so.

On this page

What is a preprint, should i consider preprint, how to make your work preprint: step-by-step.

• Peer review and preprint 
• Preprint and the Research Excellence Framework  

How to find a preprint server

A preprint is traditionally an early version of a scholarly article that is published online before being published in a journal. These days, however, a preprint may or may not end up being submitted to a journal for publication. 

• The preprint may not have been peer reviewed, although there are now new ways of managing preprints where this does happen. 
• The preprint process involves uploading your work to a preprint server, where it is publicly available for comment and feedback.
• The preprint can be the same as the version of the work submitted to a journal.

This video features members of the UK Reproducibility Network community sharing their experiences of preprints.

Back to top

Benefits of publishing a preprint

Disseminating your work as a preprint benefits you and your readers.

• Using a publicly available preprint service gives you publicly time stamped certification and registration of your work. This can help you avoid being ‘scooped’ and can also help identify instances of plagiarism.
• Preprints on some servers are open to comments and feedback. This can help you improve your manuscript and highlight potential collaboration.
• Rapid dissemination of research findings addresses the problem of delays between submitting to a journal and actual publication.
• Your work is accessible to those who cannot afford subscriptions or who are outside academia, such as businesses, charities, policy makers and the general public.
• Open access items get high visibility. This can help increase your readership and citation. Some servers give you the numbers of hits and downloads per item.
• There is no cost to the author or the reader.
• It is possible to track the changes to a discussion because the server retains previous versions.
• You usually retain the copyright of your work on preprint servers.
• Preprint servers usually assign a unique identifier to each item, enabling your work to be easily cited.
• Some funding bodies encourage, or even require, you to use preprint servers.
• It is increasingly common in some disciplines for a preprint service to be the ‘go to’ location to find out about new work in a specific field of study.
• When your work is published, some preprint servers automatically add a link from the preprint to the published version (as long as the titles match).
• On some preprint servers, you can submit direct from the preprint server to some publishers’ article submission systems (for example PLOS journals).

Concerns about preprint

There are some things to be aware of before you decide on preprint. You will need to weigh up these considerations against the benefits we’ve already seen.

• Although most journals will accept manuscripts that have previously been disseminated on preprint servers (usually if they are not-for-profit), some do consider preprints as prior publication. You can check journal details using Sherpa Romeo. Bear in mind, journal policies are generally changing on this point. You may decide to select a different journal.
• Some authors are concerned that early versions of the work will be read and cited rather than the final version, which could be confusing and inaccurate. 
• Some journals require manuscripts to be anonymised for double blind peer review. If a preprint version of the work is available, reviewers are able to discover the identity of the author(s). This can be balanced against the benefits of open commenting. The journal’s policy on deposit of preprints can be contradicted by its use of double-blind peer review.
• Some disciplines, for example medical sciences, are sensitive to findings being released before they have been peer reviewed, because they might be misinterpreted by non-specialist readers or the press.
• Check that your chosen journal allows you to make your work available as preprint. Use  Sherpa Romeo .
• Identify a  preprint server ideal for your research field .
• Register or create an account on your chosen preprint server. You may need to add your  ORCID  (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) to identify yourself.
• Grant the server a licence to distribute your work and agree to their terms of submission.  Assign the type of licence you have chosen. .
• Include as much descriptive information (metadata) about your paper as possible to help people discover it.
• Upload a copy of your paper. You may also be able to upload accompanying data or other supplementary materials.

Preprint servers

A preprint server (also known as a preprint repository) is an online service that allows authors to upload, describe and disseminate preprints. 

Most servers make the work freely available and accessible to anyone. 

The servers do not usually charge fees to authors or readers for using their service. They may be supported by an institution, such as Arxiv. A few are owned and operated by commercial companies, for example the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). 

Preprints, copyright and licences

The author usually owns the copyright of the preprint. If you are the copyright owner you can assign a licence to your preprint to describe how people may use your paper. Many authors choose to use one of the Creative Commons licences. The choice of licence is up to you as copyright holder.

To choose the most appropriate licence for your work, refer to our guidance on Creative Commons licences .

Retractions and revisions

The preprint can be updated to include changes made by the author, for example as a result of open or closed commenting. In the rare instance where an article has to be retracted, the preprint should also be shown as retracted.

Peer review and preprint

Preprint servers usually hold articles that have not been peer reviewed, but this is changing. 

Initiatives like the ones listed below allow scholarly discussion on preprint works that can help you improve your paper.

In these cases, reviewers evaluate preprints based on rigorous peer review. They may then ‘recommend’ preprints, which will make them complete, reliable and citable without the need to publish in traditional journals.

If your preprint article is ‘recommended’ in this way, you don’t even need to submit to a classic journal as well – although that is up to you. Recommended articles can still be referred to by researchers and cited in the literature.

Peer Community in (PCI)

An initiative where preprints are recommended following peer review.

PeerJ Preprints

PeerJ Preprints is a preprint server that enables comments, feedback and discussion.

An initiative by Company of Biologists to highlight selected preprints, with a digest and seal of approval.

Preprint and the Research Excellence Framework

In order to be eligible for REF, you have to deposit the final version of published journal articles in an open access repository. 

Preprints are officially eligible as long as they are the 'accepted for publication' text, which re-categorises the preprint as 'published' for REF purposes. However, some preprint servers do not currently use the correct metadata for the University to be able to find and report your paper for REF. This means that even if you deposit your accepted manuscript in a preprint server, you will still need to deposit in Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) as well.

As always, remember the rule of thumb to act on acceptance and deposit into ORA as soon as possible .

OSF Preprints

Open Science Framework (OSF) is an online platform maintained and developed by the Center For Open Science.

Directory of open access preprint repositories (DOAPR)

A directory managed by Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD) and Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR).

Preprints: What is a Preprint?

What is a preprint.

• Posting and Reviewing Preprints
• Finding and Using Preprints

A preprint is version of a research manuscript that is disseminated prior to the peer review process. Preprints are frequently posted in an electronic format and often made available to the public on a preprint server such as bioRxiv  or medRxiv . Most preprints are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI) so that it is possible to cite them in other research papers. Preprints are often associated with a push towards Open Access (OA) as well as efforts to expedite the dissemination of scientific content.  While preprints have been around for several decades, the Covid-19 global pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the number of publications archived in preprint servers. A 2020 Nature article entitled " Will the pandemic permanently alter scientific publishing " explores the potential impacts of preprints on the scholarly publications life cycle. 

Pros of archiving preprints include:

• fast dissemination/discussion of research results
• feedback from the research community prior to submission to a scientific journal
• earlier documentation of the originality of research based on DOI
• exposure of research to a potentially larger group
• availability of articles that might otherwise not be published
• availability to researchers without library access

Cons of archiving preprints include: 

• dissemination of inaccurate information
• misuse of preprints by media and news outlets
• contribution to "information overload"
• refusal of some publishers to publish items that have been archived as preprints
• What are preprints? (ASAPbio)

Preprints from ASAPBio

Preprints and Peer Review in a Pandemic: Video from JHU

Preprints, NLM, and PubMed

• Preprints: Accelerating Research NLM Tutorial that provides information about Preprints.
• NIH Preprint Pilot
• NIH Preprint Pilot FAQs
• NIH Preprint Pilot: A Librarian's Toolkit
• Next: Posting and Reviewing Preprints >>

• Last Updated: Feb 20, 2024 8:51 AM
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Preprints Involving Medical Research—Do the Benefits Outweigh the Challenges?

• 1 Ms Flanagin is Executive Managing Editor, Dr Fontanarosa is Executive Editor, and Dr Bauchner is Editor in Chief, JAMA and the JAMA Network
• Research Letter Altmetric Scores, Citations, and Publication of Studies Posted as Preprints Stylianos Serghiou, MBChB(Hons); John P. A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc JAMA
• Viewpoint Medical Preprints—A Debate Worth Having David M. Maslove, MD, MS JAMA
• Research Letter Preprint Servers’ Policies, Submission Requirements, and Transparency in Reporting and Research Integrity Recommendations Mario Malički, MD, MA, PhD; Ana Jerončić, MSc, PhD; Gerben ter Riet, MD, PhD; Lex M. Bouter, MSc, PhD; John P. A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc; Steven N. Goodman, MD, PhD; IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, MSc, PhD JAMA
• Research Letter Submissions and Downloads of Preprints in the First Year of medRxiv Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM; Theodora Bloom, PhD; Richard Sever, PhD; Claire Rawlinson, BSc; John R. Inglis, PhD; Joseph S. Ross, MD, MHS JAMA
• Viewpoint Will Medical Preprints Change Oncology Practice? Jie Xu, MD; Lanjing Zhang, MD, FRCPath JAMA Oncology
• Research Letter Assessment of Preprint Policies of Top-Ranked Clinical Journals Dorothy S. Massey, BA; Michelle A. Opare, BS; Joshua D. Wallach, PhD, MS; Joseph S. Ross, MD, MHS; Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM JAMA Network Open
• Research Letter Preprint Research Corresponding Author Gender Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic Mackenzie R. Wehner, MD, MPhil; Yao Li, MS; Kevin T. Nead, MD, MPhil JAMA Network Open

A preprint is a complete manuscript posted to a preprint server by authors before peer review and publication in a journal. The goals of preprints are to enable authors to obtain timely feedback and comments on research before submission to a peer-reviewed journal, to claim provenance of an idea, and to facilitate and expedite dissemination of and access to research. Preprints can be amended or updated, commented on by others, and remain on the preprint server even if subsequently published in a journal. They can be cited and indexed and increasingly are given attention in the news and social media. 1

In clinical medicine, the ultimate aim of research is to improve patient outcomes and public health. Whether preprint posting and rapid dissemination of non–peer-reviewed reports of medical research that could have important clinical implications and consequences help achieve the goal of improving health outcomes for patients without causing harm remains uncertain.

Preprint servers, which are increasing in number, host and archive preprint manuscripts. Considered the first preprint server, arXiv was launched in 1991 for physics researchers to share scientific reports with each other before journal publication. 2 Before that, in 1961, the US National Institutes of Health began a preprint program for sharing biological preprints, known as Information Exchange Groups, but this program was discontinued in 1967 after journals refused to consider submissions previously posted as preprints. 3 In 2013, bioRxiv was launched for preprints in biology and the life sciences, and in 2019, medRxiv , dedicated to health sciences, began. As of September 2020, there were at least 61 public preprint servers covering many disciplines; one-third (21) of these have been launched since 2018, and an increasing number permit the posting of preprints in medicine and health. 4 Preprint servers are managed and supported by a range of financial models, including support from professional societies, nongovernmental organizations, foundations, and funders, and more recently, large publishers, and some servers require a fee for preprint posting.

In this issue of JAMA , Malički and colleagues 5 report a cross-sectional analysis of 57 of the largest open (not funder-associated) preprint servers and identified 10 that have posted more than 500 preprints in the health sciences. The authors analyzed the policies of preprint servers that included screening before posting, submission requirements, and 18 recommendations on transparency in reporting and research integrity (eg, data sharing; addressing plagiarism, image manipulation, and correcting errors; reporting conflicts of interest, funding, and ethics approval; and guidance on authorship and reporting). Most preprint servers in the study (82%; n = 47) had some form of, albeit minimal, screening. Of the submission requirements, all servers required a specification of the scholarly scope of preprints and 54% (n = 31) required an indication of the type of study permitted. Regarding the assessment of transparency in reporting and research integrity recommendations, more servers that post preprints in the health sciences (40%-60%), compared with all servers (16%-39%), had recommendations about data sharing; plagiarism and correcting errors; and reporting conflicts of interest, funding, and ethics approval. However, very few of any preprint servers provided guidance on authorship (14%; n = 8), image manipulation (4%; n = 2), and reporting study statistics (n = 0) or study limitations (4%; n = 2) or following recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (9%; n = 5) or the Committee on Publication Ethics (4%; n = 2).

Also in this issue, Krumholz and coauthor-founders of the medRxiv preprint server 6 reviewed content on the server and trends 1 year after it was launched in June 2019. The founders of medRxiv met with several members of the JAMA editorial staff before launching the site to solicit feedback, and many of the issues raised in that meeting were ultimately addressed by medRxiv . Krumholz et al report the posting rate of submissions after passing screening criteria, which include the following: “the manuscript is a full scientific research report (not a narrative review, commentary, or case report); the absence of obscenity, plagiarism, or patient identifiers; and confirmation by an affiliate (a member of the scientific community who voluntary screens submissions) that posting would not pose potential risk to patients or public health.” 6

During its first year, medRxiv received 11 164 submissions, with large increases in recent months; 9967 (89%) of these submissions passed screening and were posted. The authors do not report the reasons that 11% were rejected for posting; however, they do report that only 18 (0.002%) of these preprints have been withdrawn after posting, and 13 of those withdrawals were related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Krumholz et al also report on increasing numbers of posts, downloads, and views during the debut year, especially during recent months. They indicate that COVID-19 submissions comprised 73% of the total preprints posted between February and June 2020 and that 12% of COVID-19–related submissions did not meet the screening criteria and were not posted. 6

The authors also report that only 9% of medRxiv preprints have received comments and only 10% have been published in peer-reviewed journals. The time frame for some portion of these preprints may have been too short to capture eventual journal publication, but the low rate of on-site comments raises questions whether preprints are an effective mechanism for authors to obtain feedback prior to submission to a journal. The authors note that these low rates of on-site comments do not include comments on social media. One possible explanation is that the goal of speed to dissemination has become more paramount than scientific community engagement and review before journal peer review and publication. This may reflect the COVID-19 pandemic and may not be representative of preprints in general.

Benefits and Challenges of Medical and Health-Related Preprints

Clinicians have addressed the benefits and challenges of making preprints and early manuscript drafts of new research findings widely and publicly available before accuracy, reliability, and potential bias of studies have been vetted through the traditional editorial and peer review processes. 7 , 8 A convenience sample survey of 512 researchers, librarians, publisher representatives, and many other stakeholders (including relatively small numbers of students, government and nonprofit agency representatives, clinicians, industry researchers, journalists, preprint server providers, research administrators, and funders) was conducted in June and July 2020 by ASAPbio (Accelerating Science and Publication in Biology) to assess views about the benefits and risks of preprints. 9 The majority of respondents (66%) were researchers. More than 90% of respondents indicated the top benefits of preprints as “increasing the speed of research communication” and “being free to read.” 10 However, 79% indicated they were concerned about “premature media coverage of preprints,” and 63% reported they were concerned about the “public sharing of information before peer review.” 10

In addition to having a screening process that may be more stringent than that of other preprint servers, medRxiv includes a note of caution on its home page: “Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.” 11  bioRxiv has added a similar note of caution, 12 and the arXiv physics server has added a warning specifically for its COVID-19 e-prints (ie, “they should not be relied upon without context to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information without consulting multiple experts in the field”). 13 In addition, each individual medRxiv preprint carries a cautionary note in the online version that it “reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.” 11 However, the caution for the news media included on the medRxiv homepage is missing from the online version of medRxiv preprints, and the PDF versions include none of these warnings. Given that many users will access preprints directly and share them with colleagues and not via server homepages, such cautionary warnings would be best displayed on all versions of preprints, and other preprint servers should consider adopting similar cautionary notices.

A recent study by Fraser et al, 14 released to date only as a preprint (caution advised), assessed the role of bioRxiv and medRxiv preprints during the first 4 months of the COVID-19 pandemic (January-April 2020). This study found substantially higher numbers of COVID-19–related preprints posted in the first 4 months of the pandemic compared with the total number of preprints posted about Zika virus or Ebola virus during the entire durations of those epidemics, 2015-2016 and 2014-2016, respectively. The study also found that COVID-19–related preprints received substantially higher attention in news and social media compared with non–COVID-19 preprints. Fraser et al observed that despite the warning messages provided by medRxiv and bioRxiv , “COVID-19 preprints have received unprecedented coverage on online media platforms” and suggested that “this represents a marked change in journalistic practice: pre-pandemic, bioRxiv received very little coverage in comparison to journal articles.” 14 These authors also found weak correlations between news and social media attention to preprints and citations and concluded that because most COVID-19 preprints had not yet been published, “concerns regarding quality will persist.” 14 Indeed, manuscripts posted on preprint servers during the COVID-19 pandemic have been widely noted and cited by various media outlets. Any notion that preprint servers are only for the scientific or medical community is incorrect.

There is a general assumption that more rapid access to information will improve patient outcomes—the ultimate goal of research in clinical medicine. However, it is quite clear that in some countries, information from social media and preprint servers has been used by politicians and physicians to advocate for specific treatments. In the US, early in the pandemic, both hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma were advocated by various individuals prior to any evidence suggesting benefit. This type of advocacy makes conducting randomized clinical trials more difficult and may lead to inappropriate use of some drugs and potential harm. For the majority of research in clinical medicine, posting manuscripts on preprint servers will not affect clinical care, but for studies that are likely to influence clinical care, specifically certain clinical trials and observational cohort studies, investigators should pause before posting early reports on a preprint server and consider the potential consequences.

Posting a manuscript on a preprint server before peer review and publication provides more information and is more helpful than press releases issued by investigators or companies citing a successful new treatment before peer review and publication. However, many journals have the capacity, on a limited basis, to conduct expedited editorial evaluation and peer review and to publish manuscripts in a matter of weeks. For example, recently JAMA published 3 clinical trials and a meta-analysis on the use of corticosteroids for patients with COVID-19 within 2 weeks after the last of the 4 manuscripts was submitted. 15 - 18 None of these reports had been posted as preprints. Although peer review is not without challenges and some limitations, the process does provide an important check and balance on the appropriate reporting of the conduct, analysis, interpretations, and conclusions of a study.

Journal Guidance for Authors and Journalists Regarding Preprints

A recent study of 100 top-ranked clinical journals found that 86% of journals allowed preprints and 13% had a case-by-case assessment policy. 19 Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, journal preprint policies and guidance for authors had been evolving. For example, in 2018 JAMA and the JAMA Network journals discouraged authors from submitting manuscripts that had been previously released to the public as preprints. In 2019, the JAMA Network journals changed the policy to a case-by-case determination: “Public dissemination of manuscripts prior to, simultaneous with, or following submission to this journal, such as posting the manuscript on preprint servers or other repositories, will necessitate making a determination of whether publication of the submitted manuscript will add meaningful new information to the medical literature or will be redundant with information already disseminated with the posting of the preprint.” 20

Accordingly, posting of a manuscript on a preprint server before submission to a JAMA Network journal does not preclude consideration of the manuscript for publication, although authors are advised and expected to provide information about any preprint postings, along with any other related manuscripts, at the time of submission of a manuscript to the journal. The journals also follow an embargo policy for submitted and accepted manuscripts that restricts news coverage until publication and advise authors to avoid promoting preprints of their submitted manuscripts in the news media and in social media before editorial evaluation and peer review and journal publication. 20 To help encourage transparency, the JAMA Network also recommends that authors who cite preprints in their manuscripts indicate “preprint” in the citation in reference lists. 21

Other major journals have also modified their policies regarding preprints. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine also permits submission of manuscripts previously posted as preprints provided that authors notify the journal of any such preprint. 22 In 2018, The Lancet began offering authors the option to simultaneously post preprints to its publisher-owned preprint server when submitting manuscripts. The Lancet editors report that about 30% of authors of research manuscripts submitted to the Lancet journals have opted to post preprints, but of those, “only two-thirds had all the required information (ethics approval if needed, declaration of interests, funding statement, and prospective registration for randomised controlled trials).” 23 The editors also note concern about widespread press attention to preprints and the need for caution when citing such research and note a plan to “apply a more obvious watermark stating that these are preprints and not peer reviewed.” 23

In 2019, the Nature journals, including Nature Medicine , announced a move from support to encouragement of preprints and advise that authors can engage with news media about their preprint studies provided they explain that the study has not been peer reviewed and that findings could change. 24 In 2020, PLOS journals amended their policy toward preprints and publication embargoes, in that manuscripts previously posted as preprints and accepted for publication remain under a news embargo. 25 In doing so, PLOS reversed its previous policy of not applying an embargo to articles previously posted as preprints, citing their analysis that found that manuscripts previously posted as preprints and released to the press without embargo received significantly less media attention than a comparison group of manuscripts previously posted as preprints that were embargoed until journal publication. PLOS journals made this change to avoid a disadvantage to authors of reports previously posted as preprints and acknowledged that press embargoes are the best tool to facilitate fair and equal access to journalists and allow them time to assess new research and consult experts before dissemination to the public. 25

Guidance from press officers at the University of Leuven in Belgium concedes that preprint servers are “a goldmine for journalists looking for their next big story” and offers useful tips to researchers in dealing with the complexities of studies reported in preprints and the news media. 26 Bollen and Nelissen 26 advise authors to not request promotion of preprints via press offices because “press officers are not peer reviewers, and one single press release about findings that don’t hold up can cause long-lasting damage.” They also urge authors to not send their preprints to journalists to draw their attention to their work, recognizing that preprints are intended to be read by fellow researchers and that journalists and the public may not understand the difference between an unvetted preprint and a peer-reviewed article and that premature coverage may contribute to disinformation. They also advise authors if a journalist contacts them to ask about a manuscript previously posted as a preprint that is under review with a journal to ask the journal about its policy on preprints and embargoes before responding to the journalist. This guidance has long been recommended by the JAMA Network journals 20 and many other medical and health journals. 27

In a recent JAMA Viewpoint, Saitz and Schwitzer 28 described concerns regarding the rapid public reporting on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir for treatment of patients with COVID-19 as examples of how misinformation can damage public trust in science and medicine. The authors urged caution, scrutiny, and clear and complete reporting of new study findings during the COVID-19 pandemic, including assessment of study limitations and presenting important caveats, and acknowledged that this applies to preprints and new releases as well as journal articles that are expedited to publication. Saitz and Schwitzer addressed common failures in this regard, including: “(1) a focus on single study results without the context of other studies or acknowledgment that single studies are rarely definitive; (2) overemphasis on results, particularly relative effects, without recognition of important limitations; and (3) communications based on incomplete reports of studies and reports of studies that have not been adequately reviewed.” 28

During the COVID-19 pandemic, and perhaps thereafter, investigators may continue to want their findings released and shared as rapidly as possible, but such speed to widespread public dissemination vs sharing within a community of specialists most likely to understand the complexities of the science and concerns to public health or without rigorous editorial evaluation and peer review before publication does not come without consequences and potential for harm. 29 , 30 For many investigators, preprints may be considered an initial step along the scientific dissemination and publication pathway, just as abstract, poster, and video research presentations at in-person and virtual scientific meetings have a role in the early sharing and discussion of studies among specialist communities before publication in a journal. While manuscripts previously posted as preprints may be improved following formal submission to a journal and undergoing editorial evaluation, peer review, revision, and editing, others may not be suitable for formal publication because of methodologic flaws, biases, and important limitations. Authors should share preprints during the processes of manuscript submission to journals, just as they do with study protocols and registration reports, to aid journal editors in the evaluation of the quality of the reporting of the study and prioritization for publication. Preprints and preprint servers are here to stay, but perhaps in the immediate future a more selective use of these sites may be warranted, with clinical investigators exercising caution when the focus of a study is on drugs, vaccines, or medical devices and the results of a study may directly affect treatment of patients.

Corresponding Author: Annette Flanagin, RN, MA, JAMA and the JAMA Network, 330 N Wabash Ave, Chicago, IL 60611 ( [email protected] ).

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

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Flanagin A , Fontanarosa PB , Bauchner H. Preprints Involving Medical Research—Do the Benefits Outweigh the Challenges? JAMA. 2020;324(18):1840–1843. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.20674

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Academic Journals: What is a Preprint?

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Peer review is the anonymous evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field. In a peer review process, independent and qualified people in the same field examine an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas for accuracy and quality. 

A preprint is a scholarly work that has typically not undergone peer review. The term preprint is sometimes used to refer to the manuscript that is submitted for publication but has not yet been subject to editorial or peer review.

A postprint is a scholarly work that has undergone peer-review and has been accepted for publication. A postprint could be the published version, also called the version of record, or it could be the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM). The author’s accepted manuscript has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication. The AAM may be the same as the publisher’s version or it might have slightly different formatting, pagination or copyediting.

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Ask in person at the 2nd floor service desk, call: 215-503-6994 ( service desk hours ), email: [email protected], what are preprints.

A preprint is an early version of an academic article that has been made available by the author for others to read for free online before it has been peer-reviewed or published by an academic journal.

What are the benifits of preprints?

(1) They allow the information contained in articles to be shared with the academic community more rapidly and openly than traditional publications. The formal journal publication process is often lengthy, and it can take many months for an article to be reviewed and published by a journal.

(2) Research has shown that publishing a journal article as a preprint can increase citations to the final peer-reviewed article.

• "Releasing a preprint is associated with more attention and citations for the peer-reviewed article."

(3) By posting a freely accessible version of an article online, the author has the opportunity to receive comments and reviews by readers that might lead to changes and improvements in the final published draft.

(4) It can be used by researchers to provide evidence of productivity when applying for jobs or submitting grant proposals, and it can also generally help to establish the priority of discovery and ideas.

(5) Posting an article as a preprint can also particularly benefit early career researchers. It can help them to find research collaborators and help to improve their professional network, which can lead to more opportunities for these researchers.

• "On the value of preprints: An early career researcher perspective"

Things to keep in mind about preprints.

Preprints have not been peer-reviewed : While preprints are scholarly articles, they have not yet been formally peer-reviewed. Some preprint servers may do a rudimentary check to ensure that submitted content is legitimate scientific/academic research, but they are not checking the reliability and accuracy of the information in the article. It is important that those reading and using preprints keep this in mind.

A few journals might not accept articles published as preprints: While an increasing number of publishers and journals welcome the submissions of articles that have been released as a preprint, some journals might not accept them. It is important to check the policies of any journal you may wish to submit to before releasing a preprint. You can learn more about these policies using the links below.

• SHERPA/ROMIO This database can be used to learn if publishers and journals support preprint publishing.
• Transpose This database provides even more detail about journal policies towards preprints.

Selected preprint servers

• ASAPbio This organization's website contains a comprehensive list of preprint servers and compares server policies

Discipline-Specific Preprint Servers

• arXiv physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics
• bioRxiv biology and life sciences
• ChemRxiv chemistry
• medRxiv health sciences/clinical research
• PsyArXiv psychological sciences
• EarthArXiv earth sciences
• NuitriXiv nutritional sciences
• SocArXiv social sciences
• SportRXiv sport, exercise, performance, and health research

Multidisciplinary Preprint Servers

• OSF Preprints Supported by the Center for Open Science, OSF is a free and open platform that supports a variety of discipline-specific preprint servers (including several discipline-specific ones mentioned above). The OSF search aggregator allows users to search through its own preprint collections and those of other organizations.
• Preprints.org Multidisciplinary preprint server.

Preprints and Grant Funding

The National Institutes of Health  supports the use and citation of preprints as "interim research projects" to "speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor" of an author's work. Authors are encouraged to include preprints in their "My Bibliography" and associate preprints with their grants.

The NIH is also currently engaged in the second round of a pilot program designed to explore the inclusion of preprints in the PubMed database.

• NIH: Reporting Preprints and other Interim Research Projects
• NIH Preprint Pilot

To learn about other funder's policies towards preprints, you can consult  t he ASAPbio webpage:

• ASAPbio Funder Policies towards Preprints

Other common questions about preprints

Will the publication of preprints lead to an increase in incorrect information being reported in the media?

"These concerns are valid, but there is good reason to believe that they can be mitigated and managed...[with]...attention and inspection from our scientific community....preprints can be screened before posting to block attempts to propagate misinformation. Furthermore, some preprint servers display disclaimers on the top of each article to make clear that preprints are not validated through peer-review." 

Will publishing work as a preprint mean that an idea is more likely to get scooped?

"As jobs and grants become very competitive, there is increasing worry...about scooping, ie that their ideas/results will be published by others and that they will not receive proper attribution....Our argument is that this is unlikely, and indeed there is likely be to greater protection and overall fairness in establishing credit for work by submitting both to a preprint server (for fair and timely disclosure) and to a journal (for validation by peer review)." 

Do I have to inform journal when I submit that I have posted the article as a preprint.

You should let a journal know if you have posted a preprint for a couple of reasons. First, this will help the journal and preprint repositories connect your preprint to the final published article. Also, since plagiarism detection software will pick up preprints as a match, the journal will more easily be able to review those reports if they know you have published a preprint. 

Can a preprint provide a record of priority for idea development or discovery?

Preprint servers should include a "timestamp indicating when the article appeared, which is usually within 24 hours of submission. This date, along with the preprint itself, is made open access... and thus, anyone can determine the order of priority relative to other published work or, indeed, other preprints. While journals provide an important service of validation through peer review, the establishment of priority can be significantly delayed because the work is not public during the process of peer review in most journals." 

Is an article that has been posted as a preprint automatically of a lower quality than one published in a journal?

"Certainly, the peer review process can add significant value to the work, pointing out errors or areas for improvement. Nevertheless, authors must stand behind their submitted preprint, because it is a public disclosure (and hence a citable entity), albeit a non-peer-reviewed one. Even without peer review, their scientific colleagues will be reading and judging the work, and the authors’ reputations are at stake." 

The following sites were used as sources to answer these questions and they are also great places to learn even more about preprints. 

• ASAPbio Preprint FAQ
• Ten Simple Rules to Consider Regarding Preprint Submission
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What are Preprints and How They Impact Researchers

What are preprints? Preprints can be defined as scientific manuscripts posted freely on public servers for views and comments before they are published through the traditional route in journals. Paper preprints also allow authors to gather valuable pre-publication feedback from experts in their field of study. But since preprints do not undergo conventional peer review processes, they may not all be authentic, scientifically rigorous, and trustworthy. Let’s look at the benefits of preprints as well as the challenges associated with them to understand whether they pose a risk to scientific research.

What are the benefits of preprints and why are they gaining importance?

Listed below are four reasons why research paper preprints have emerged as a popular form of scientific dissemination.

1. Paper preprints can speed up dissemination of research

Publishing a manuscript in a peer-reviewed journal is a lengthy process involving multiple checks and reviews of your manuscript and, often, numerous revision requests before it is accepted or rejected. This process takes several weeks to months. As a result, you may lose time, and your research may become outdated by the time it is thoroughly reviewed, or someone else may publish similar research before you do. The benefits of preprints are especially visible amid a pandemic, when traditional publishing models are unable to meet the urgent demand for rapid dissemination of new knowledge and insights into managing the crisis.

Paper preprints are a great way of accelerating the dissemination of your results. Once you upload your manuscript on a preprint server, it undergoes certain essential checks and is assigned a DOI within days. Your paper is then ready for the world to view and comment on, ensuring timely credit for your work. One big benefit of preprints on servers like medRxiv are that once uploaded, an article is screened within just 4-5 days, making it a preferable option for authors, especially during a global health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. 1

2. Preprints increase accessibility and impact of research

Did you know that the world cannot access 65% of the 100 most cited papers because they are behind paywalls? 2 Costly journal subscriptions and restricted access to a lot of important research can be frustrating. Moreover, limited accessibility impacts the pace of research dissemination.

Among the various benefits of preprints, one is that they tackle this problem by making research freely accessible. A key benefit of preprints is that you can post your article online for free. A considerable proportion of the audience, including independent researchers and academics, non-governmental organizations, educators, and the media, can access and benefit from learning about the latest research through preprints. A paper preprint is bound to get more views than a paywalled article and, therefore, be shared and cited more extensively.

3. Potentially fast-tracking career opportunities and avenues for collaboration

Paper preprints ensure that you don’t have to wait for an article to be published in a journal in order to showcase your work to job committees or funding bodies. Preprints can also help you attract invitations to present at conferences and seminars or to collaborate with researchers from the same field on high-impact research projects. Essentially, the benefits of preprints are similar to that of traditional journal articles, only they are visible much sooner.

4. Paper preprints attract reviews by a group of peers before the journal peer review

Posting a preprint allows you to gain valuable feedback on your research from multiple experts in your field. This can help you improve the quality of your paper preprint before the traditional journal peer review, thus potentially enhancing the chances of acceptance for your paper and increasing publication speed. James Fraser, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), views preprint publishing as an instrument for better science. He says, ‘Posting preprints offers people the chance to be more thoroughly evaluated, which is especially beneficial for younger scientists.’ 3

This point is supported by the fact that 71% of bioRxiv users reported receiving feedback on their research paper preprints. 4 Readers can use the author’s contact information on the server to share feedback with the author through social media platforms, emails or conferences. Some preprint servers also allow readers to post comments on the server itself.

  What are the challenges related to preprints?

While there are several benefits of preprints for authors, academic audiences, and the general population, they also come with a set of challenges. The largest one is that they are unrefereed since they do not undergo the conventional peer-review process before being posted on preprint servers. This lack of a thorough review can pose a major risk to scientific progress and undermine researchers’ work. Eric Topol, a member of bioRxiv’s advisory board, warned in an article in  The New York Times  that ‘anyone who reads a research paper preprint will embrace it almost in a blind fashion’ and process information selectively such that it aligns with their worldview. 5

Often, preprints showcase eye-catching research that receives a lot of popularity through instant sharing. The risks of low-quality research receiving unwarranted attention, especially by non-experts, is high. In addition to that, there are risks of misleading information being spread because of an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of even high-quality research. A paper preprint posted early last year erroneously claimed that the structure of SARS-CoV-2 was similar to that of HIV. 6 This paper preprint was shared widely across social media platforms and news channels, sparking rumors and conspiracy theories.

Many non-experts may not be able to identify academically rigorous research from among a sea of preprints of unverified quality. How can this challenge be overcome?

Focus on the dissemination of quality science

Preprint repositories are aware of the risks of misinformation. Hence, they have been proactive in warning the audience that the content is not peer-reviewed and is thus unverified. Several advise readers to use or interpret the content with caution, direct them to the latest versions of a paper preprint, and, if a preprint is withdrawn, state the reasons why.

bioRxiv and medRxiv are going a step ahead to address these challenges by implementing basic quality control checks. 7 New manuscripts are subjected to plagiarism checks, and their basic scientific value is assessed by principal investigators (PIs) (on bioRxiv) and healthcare professionals (on medRxiv). The paper preprint is also scanned for ethics committee approval, trial registration, informed consent, and conflict of interests. medRxiv has been approving papers that are ready for peer review. Also, medRxiv does not accept individual case reports, manuscripts with small sample sizes, and those proposing COVID-19 treatments based only on computational modelling.

Researchers who read research paper preprints are trying to reduce misinformation risks by sharing feedback on newly uploaded preprints through different forums, including social media. Authors putting up their work on preprint servers need to serve as their own critics and shoulder the responsibility of ensuring that the manuscripts they post meet basic standards of academic work. Erroneous information or potentially misleading statements in a research paper preprint can undermine the work of the scientific community and damage an author’s credibility. So, as an author, how can you ensure error-free submissions and attract the attention of publishers and journals to your preprints? The answer is in smart manuscript submission check by Researcher.Life that helps determine if a manuscript is submission-ready.

  How can Researcher.Life benefit preprint authors?

Researcher.Life is a subscription-based platform that brings together tools and services that help authors at every stage, including a robust AI-powered submission readiness checker. Comprehensive and secure, this one-stop evaluation identifies critical errors that could cause rejection and helps you ensure that your paper is error-free. For preprint authors, this is a great way to check for language, structure, references and other criteria that most journals use in their editorial screening processes. It also helps you prepare and refine your paper preprint so that it needs less work at the journal peer review stage, which allows for faster publishing success.

Preprint servers have been putting several key checks in place to improve the quality of manuscripts they host. Consequently, they have reduced the effort needed at the editorial screening and peer-review stages once journals eventually process paper preprints. However, the primacy of peer-reviewed journals over preprints remains unquestioned in academic publishing. Despite the many benefits of preprints, these have a long way to go until they can be considered a source of trusted science. Until then, the  submission readiness checker by Researcher.Life  can help researchers ensure that their paper preprints are as ready for dissemination as possible.

  References

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), medRxiv. Retrieved from https://www.medrxiv.org/about/FAQ#:~:text=How%20long%20does%20it%20take,the%20paper%20is%20within%20scope
• Nicholson, J., Pepe, J. 65 out of the 100 most cited papers are paywalled. Retrieved from https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/125400-65-out-of-the-100-most-cited-papers-are-paywalled
• Socholastica, Authorea. Open Access + Preprints: Journals and scholars take action, 2016. Retrieved from https://asapbio.org/junior-faculty
• Coudert, F. The rise of preprints in chemistry, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-020-0477-5
• The New York Times – Coronavirus Tests Science’s Need for Speed Limits. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/science/coronavirus-disinformation.html
• Prashant P. et al. Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag. bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1

Kwon, D. How swamped preprint servers are blocking bad coronavirus research. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01394-6

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What Is a Preprint? 5 Step Guide to Successfully Publish Yours!

The article is also available in: Turkish , Spanish , Portuguese , and Russian

“I think you should go ahead and publish it on a preprint platform. Your research is a crucial link for understanding fundamental research. The more we wait to publish your work in an academic journal and continue with the traditional process, the more is the risk of someone else publishing it before you. Think about it.” said your colleague, time and again. However, you had multiple questions, and nowhere to find their answers.  Well, not anymore! Here we have answers to all your questions and a complete step-wise guide to publish a preprint ready article.

Table of Contents

What Are Preprint Articles?

A Preprint is a fully drafted research paper that is available as Open Access to all, before it undergoes peer review. Authors get credit for the work published on preprint platform and get visibility and recognition for the same. Furthermore, authors are able to share their research quicker as compared to journal publishing, which is a thorough and longer process. The papers published on preprints servers are assigned with DOI and citable at discretion of the user, as the papers have not undergone the scrutiny of a peer reviewer. However, it helps valuable research reach the scholarly community much in time.

What Are the Advantages of Preprint Article in Research?

Preprint publishing is a small but rising knowledge dissemination platform in the field of research. It assists in making research studies available on various preprint journal. Preprints benefit the research in following ways:

• Makes research study available to the community as early as possible
• Readers can critically assess the research papers published on preprint platform
• Allows updating potential errors or suggestions before final publishing
• Helps authors strengthen their research arguments
• Makes way for collaboration, which will eventually lead to publishing in a reputed journal.

Publish Papers on Preprint Servers

Scholarly papers that are not yet accepted by academic journals, are posted on Preprint servers. Preprint servers are online repositories that contain data and information of various scholarly papers. The papers sent to these repositories undergo basic screening and plagiarism check ; however, are not peer reviewed. Various preprint servers are –

It is an open access preprint repository for biological sciences and hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

It is a multidisciplinary preprint repository for physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, electrical engineering, and system sciences.

3. ChemRxiv

It is an open access preprint repository for chemical science. The American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry and German Chemical Society operates this repository.

4. The Winnower

It is an open access online scholarly publishing platform. It allows researchers and colleagues to undergo scholastic discussions of topic review the posted scholarly

5. PrePubMed

5 Steps to Produce a Preprint Article

1. know your target audience, know your paper.

Preprint s publish articles from various fields of research that deliver original scientific work. The papers can be of different types like, Original Paper/Article, Review Paper/Article, Case Report, Conference Report, Technical Notes, Hypothesis, etc. Paper submitted for preprint publishing should not be under journal or conference proceedings, as the aim of preprints is to create a platform for original research. It is important to know who is the target audience for the preprint paper you are planning to publish. This allows you to set the tone of the paper and will help you choose the correct repository as well.

2. Write an Impactful Title and Abstract

The “Title” and “Abstract” are first to gauge most attention by your audience. Therefore, it is important to write an effective title and abstract for your paper. Avoid unnecessary jargons and mention the keywords in the title. Keep it concise and informative; it is a concentrated version of the manuscript. Therefore, make sure to keep the abstract detailed and include all aspects of the research. It is essential to keep the abstract unbiased, i.e. you should mention favorable outcomes and results, but also mention any non-significant and adverse data. This gives the author an authoritative right on the research work and help get through the screening process effortlessly.

3. Adhere to Publishing Ethics

Although not peer reviewed, it is a scientific paper that needs accuracy in stating the research findings. Authors must follow the COPE Guidelines and include an objective discussion over the significance of research. Any kind of plagiarism, data fabrication, and image modification (knowingly or unknowingly) is not permitted and the paper will be rejected in the screening process of preprint publishing. Ensure to take copyright permissions for the data used to support the research objectives and declare conflict of interests while submitting the paper for preprint publishing.

4. Authors Must Qualify Authorship and Link Their ORCID

All the authors who contribute to the paper must be aware and agree to the submission to preprint journal. Authors should qualify for authorship as per the authorship guidelines. Furthermore, authors should get themselves registered in ORCID and link their ORCID to the preprint repository during the submission process. This increases the authenticity of the published preprint paper and can acquire more recognition and citation.

5. Finally, Be Aware of the Details Related to Manuscript Withdrawal

Preprint research papers cannot be withdrawn once published! Although this is true, there are situations in which the paper can be retracted from the preprint server. Preprint papers can be retracted in the following situations –

• Data fabrication and plagiarism
• Scientific errors that cannot be corrected by updating the manuscript
• Copyright violation

At the discretion of the preprint server editors and advisory committee, the paper will be deleted from the repository.

How to Publish a Research Paper on a Preprint Platform?

Based on the type of research paper , a researcher can choose the repository to publish his/her paper.

Steps to Publish on a Preprint Server:

• Create an account and register on the preprint server site.
• Submit the abstract, as per the guidelines iterated by the preprint.
• Before the paper is posted online, the manuscript will undergo a short screening process. Screening mainly includes checking basic scientific content, author background, and compliance to ethical aspects.
• Post publishing, the paper will be available on the repository for others to download, share, comment on, and cite.

In conclusion, preprint publishing is becoming popular but there are pros and cons to this process and authors are advised to choose wisely before deciding what to do with their years of hard work of generating the research data.

Do let us know if you have published an article on a preprint server. How was the process? Were you able to go through the process easily? Do comment below or write to us and tell us about your first ever preprint experience.

Toᥙche. Great arguments. Keep up the good effort.

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How different are preprints from their published versions? 2 studies have some answers

Both studies find that most COVID-19 research papers don’t drastically change between the time they are posted on a preprint server and when they're published in an academic journal.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Naseem S. Miller, The Journalist's Resource February 2, 2022

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/media/two-studies-examine-preprints/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Two new papers, published on Feb. 1 in PLOS Biology, add to the growing body of research that’s attempting to measure how much research papers change between the time they’re posted by authors on preprint servers to when they’re peer reviewed and published in an academic journal.

Both studies find that most COVID-19 research papers don’t drastically change, but one of the studies also shows that about 1 in 5 COVID-19 preprints do have major changes in their conclusions by the time they’re published, a reminder for journalists to be careful and critical when covering scientific studies.

One study , led by Liam Brierley , an epidemiologist and statistician at the University of Liverpool, manually compares 184 life science preprints with their published versions. It finds that for most preprints only minor changes were made to the conclusions in the abstracts of their published version. But it also finds that 17% of COVID-19 preprints had major changes in the conclusion of their abstracts when published. That’s compared with 7% studies that were not about COVID-19.

The other study , led by David Nicholson , a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, uses machine learning and text analysis to explore the relationships between nearly 18,000 life science preprints and their published versions. It shows that most differences between the two versions were due to changes in typesetting and the mention of supplementary materials or additional files.

Neither study explores the percentage of preprints that are never published or are retracted.

Preprints and peer review explained

Covering biomedical research preprints amid the coronavirus: 6 things to know

Preprints are research papers that are posted by authors to a server before the formal peer review process and publication in an academic journal.

Many life science and biomedical studies, including those related to the pandemic, are posted to the health sciences server  medRxiv  (pronounced med-archive) and the biological sciences server  bioRxiv (pronounced bio-archive). arXiv is another open-access server for papers on physics, math, computer science and economics. Overall, there are more than 60 preprint servers.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints were mostly used and discussed by scientists. But since early 2020, the number of preprints posted on servers has exponentially grown and preprint studies have been discussed on social media, covered by traditional media and have influenced public opinion and policy.

Peer review is a process that research papers, including preprints, go through in order to be published in an academic journal. The journals’ editors take advice from experts, also called referees, who assess the study. The articles are typically published only after the authors have addressed referees’ concerns and the journal editors are satisfied, according to an explainer on medRxiv.

The peer review process usually takes months, and sometimes more than a year. During the pandemic, many researchers needed to communicate their findings quickly. So they turned to preprint servers, where they can upload their papers and reach a wide audience.

Many preprints are eventually peer reviewed and published. According to some estimates about two-thirds to three-quarters of biomedical preprints are eventually published in academic journals. But with the rapid growth of preprints, there are more discussions around the peer-review process and its role . Researchers are also exploring questions about the reliability of preprints because their conclusions might change after the peer-review process.

What’s peer review? 5 things you should know before covering research

There’s no simple answer to the ongoing discussion, but the bottom line for journalists stays the same: take a pause and scrutinize any study you plan on reporting.

“Before covering a preprint, or any unreviewed or preliminary research, ask yourself: ‘Do the benefits for my audience outweigh the potential risks?'” advised Alice Fleerackers , a researcher at Simon Fraser University’s Scholarly Communications Lab who has been studying the preprint landscape , in an email interview. She was not involved in the studies discussed in this piece.

And remember that “the peer review is not a silver bullet quality control mechanism,” Fleerackers added. “Journalists should be careful and critical when covering  any  scientific research, peer reviewed or not.”

What the two studies show

Tracking changes between preprint posting and journal publication during a pandemic liam brierley ; et al. plos biology, february 2022..

The study’s aim : Researchers wanted to find out whether preprints withstand the scrutiny of the peer review process and whether their conclusions change by the time they’re published.

How they did it : The team identified 105 COVID-19 preprints that were posted on bioRxiv and medRxiv servers between January and April 2020, as well as 105 non-COVID-19 preprints posted between September 2019 and April 2020, and that were eventually published in a peer-reviewed journal. After excluding several studies for various reasons such as lacking an abstract in the published version, they narrowed down the total to 184 preprint-published study pairs. They then used a computer program and the Microsoft Word Track Changes feature to compare the text of the abstract in the preprint and corresponding published version.

Researchers didn’t analyze the entire text of the article and used the abstracts instead. Abstracts are considered the first port of call for most readers. They often contain the summary of the key findings and main conclusions of the study and are freely accessible, even for journals that have paywalls.

What they found : Overall, the study shows that preprints were most often published with only minor changes to the conclusions in their abstracts. This suggests that the publication process has a minimal but beneficial effect on preprints by increasing sample sizes or statistics or by making author language more conservative, the authors write. The study also shows:

• Overall, most abstracts are comparable between the preprinted and published article, but COVID-19 articles underwent greater textual changes in their abstracts compared with non-COVID-19 articles. Specifically, 17.2% of COVID-19 abstracts had major changes in their conclusions compared with 7.2% of non-COVID-19 abstracts.
• More than 85% of preprints didn’t have any changes in authorship when published. However, COVID-19 preprints were almost three times as likely to have additional authors when published, compared with non-COVID-19 preprints (17.2% versus 6.2%).
• On average there was no difference in the total number of figures and tables when comparing preprints with their published version. The authors also find that in more than two-thirds of published studies, the content of the figures didn’t change. But in 23%, there was significant content added or removed.
• The team also investigated the impact of public discourse on preprints — such as discussion on Twitter — and changes to the abstract or figures in the published version. Overall, they didn’t find a strong correlation between the number of comments or tweets and amount of change in publication.
• Also of note, they report COVID-19 preprints don’t always share their data publicly and many authors provide data only upon request. Also, many published articles had faulty hyperlinks to the supporting information. “The biggest surprise was how difficult it was to access supplemental data in published papers — many of the links on journal websites were broken or looped back to the main paper,” wrote Jonathon Alexis Coates , one of the study’s seven co-authors, in an email interview.

Findings apply to more recent preprints. Coates, a post-doctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London, started a podcast in 2021 called Preprints in Motion , where he discusses preprints with the authors. “Through this, and my observations of using preprints, it definitely appears that our data holds up and that there would probably not be significant differences if we analyzed pairs from 2021,” Coates said in his email. “More, scientifically, we included a control data set of non-COVID preprints that were posted and published during the same time period (or as close as we could get). This data showed a similar pattern to the COVID preprints, suggesting that the results are applicable beyond pandemic-related work.”

The bigger picture : The pandemic has had some impact on the scientific community’s view of preprints, Coates wrote in his email. “Preprints are much more accepted and scientists within the biosciences have a greater awareness and understanding of preprints generally,” he wrote. “Many had positive experiences posting pandemic-related preprints and have, anecdotally stated they will preprint again in the future. I have also noticed that more scientists appear to be actively thinking about the publication process and how it needs to change which I think is a big positive.” He added that the study is not a direct comment on the peer review process.

What other experts say about the study : Fleerackers said it was “shocking” to see that 17.2% of COVID-19 preprints underwent major changes in their conclusions. “This is a scary finding, considering how much preprints have been used in pandemic reporting and policy decisions,” she wrote in her email. “This has major implications for journalists who rely on these preprints in their reporting, and for audiences who try to make health decisions based on this unreviewed evidence. It’s also important for researchers who cite and build on these results in their research.”

Advice to journalists : “For journalists covering preprints, I would consider focusing on big picture findings rather than specific statistics, contextualizing any results within a larger body of evidence, and emphasizing that these findings could change in future — as is the case with all science,” wrote Fleerackers. “[Do] your homework as a journalist: read the methods and limitations critically and seek opinions from independent researchers, particularly on those parts of the manuscript that you don’t have the expertise to vet yourself. This is true for all research, but the results of this study suggest it may be even more important when covering preprints, particularly those about COVID-19.”

Study limitations : Because researchers didn’t compare the entire content of the studies, it’s not clear whether changes in the abstract reflect changes throughout the manuscript. Researchers also add:

• They looked at a small sample of studies that were published in academic journals shortly after they were posted on preprint servers, so they study excludes preprints that may have been published more slowly.
• Because of its short time frame, the study doesn’t use unpublished preprints as a control. This comparison would provide a stronger and more direct findings on the role of journal peer review and the reliability of preprints, the authors note.
• In addition, the study doesn’t measure how much of the changes were introduced by the peer-review process since it is difficult to determine when the preprint was posted relative to submission to the journal. Some preprints are revised and posted on servers several times before they are published.
• Researchers also note that it is difficult to objectively compare two versions of a research paper. For example, abstracts that had many changes in the text, such as rearrangements of words, didn’t have a meaningful change in their conclusion.

Conflicts of Interest : The researchers report that one of the authors is the executive director of ASAPbio , a non-profit organization promoting the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. Another is a bioRxiv affiliate, part of a volunteer group of scientists that screen preprints deposited on the bioRxiv server.

Examining Linguistic Shifts Between Preprints and Publications David Nicholson ; et al. PLOS Biology, February 2022.

The study’s goal: The team wanted to compare the text of preprints in bioRxiv and their corresponding published studies to examine how peer review changes the documents. They used computer programs to analyze and compare the texts. Researchers also used the programs to identify similar papers and journals. It’s important to note that the study doesn’t investigate similarities in results and conclusions.

How they did it : They downloaded a snapshot of PubMed Central , which is an open access digital archive of full text peer-reviewed biomedical and life science research and is part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine on Jan. 31, 2020. They also downloaded a snapshot of the content of bioRxiv on Feb. 3, 2020. In addition, they downloaded a snapshot of New York Times Article Archives on July 7, 2020 as a representative of general English text and to identify bioRxiv preprints linked to a published article. They linked 17,952 preprints with a published version in PubMed.

What they found : Over 77% of bioRxiv preprints had a corresponding published version. “This suggests that most work from groups participating in the preprint ecosystem is now available in final form for literature mining and other applications,” Nicholson and co-authors write. They also find:

• A subset of preprints posted in the first four months of the pandemic were published faster than the broader set of bioRxiv preprints, showing that peer review was accelerated.
• The most common change between a preprint and published version was typesetting and the mention of supporting information or additional materials.
• Preprints that had more versions posted on the servers and more changes in text took longer to publish. Every additional preprint version was associated with an increase of 51 days before a preprint was published. This suggests that authors may be updating their preprints in response to peer reviews or other external feedback.
• The team also created the Preprint Similarity Search website that sifts through 1.7 million  PubMed Central open access documents  and lets users to find 10 papers and journals that are most similar to the textual content of a  bioRxiv  or  medRxiv  preprint.

What other experts say about the study : “I am surprised that more than three-quarters (77%) of the preprints they analyzed are now available in a peer reviewed journal,” wrote Fleerackers in an email. “This is higher than what was found in previous studies, and is likely an underestimate of the true number of preprints that are eventually published. For journalists, this is a really important takeaway as it answers another key question that could influence their decision to cover preprints: ‘How often do preprints actually get published in peer reviewed journals?'”

Fleerackers added that the Nicholson study adds more context to the study by the Brierley team because it looks at a much larger number of preprints and their corresponding published versions.

Advice to journalists : “Treat preprints with a grain of salt, but treat peer-reviewed publications that way too,” said Casey Greene , who’s one of Nicholson’s five co-authors, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and the founding director of the Center for Health AI in the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Ultimately, both are simply steps along our path to better understanding the world around us.”

Conflicts of Interest : Researchers report that one author receives a salary from Elsevier, a Netherlands-based publishing company specializing in scientific, technical and medical content.

What other studies show

In “ Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions ,” published in the International Journal on Digital Libraries in February 2018, researchers compared the text of title, abstract and body of preprints posted on arXiv and bioRxiv servers with their published version. They ended up with 12,202 preprints posted between 2003 and 2015 on arXiv and 2,516 posted between 2013 and 2016 on bioRxiv that had a final published version. Their analysis shows that “the text contents of the scientific papers generally changed very little from their pre-print to final published versions.”

News media outlets vary widely in how they cover preprint studies, new research finds

In “ Cross-sectional study of preprints and final journal publications from COVID-19 studies: discrepancies in results reporting and spin in interpretation ,” published in BMJ Open in July 2021, researchers compare preprints and final journal publications for 67 COVID-19 studies and find that one-third had no discrepancies in results. About a quarter had at least one outcome that was included in the journal publication but not in the preprint.

In 12% of the studies, at least one outcome was reported in the preprint only.

They also evaluated the studies for spin, which refers to specific reporting practices that distort the interpretation of results so that results are viewed more favorably.

“The COVID-19 preprints and their subsequent journal publications were largely similar in reporting of study characteristics, outcomes and spin,” the authors write. “All COVID-19 studies published as preprints and journal publications should be critically evaluated for discrepancies and spin.”

Meanwhile, in “ COVID-19 randomized controlled trials in medRxiv and PubMed ,” a small study published in the European Journal of Medicine in November 2020, researchers compare the full text of 13 preprint studies posted on medRxiv with 16 published studies in PubMed, all of which were about COVID-19 and were randomized controlled trials. The preprint studies were not related to the published studies.

Their analysis shows an increased rate of spin — positive terms used in the title or abstract section — in preprints compared with published studies. “Readers should pay attention to the overstatements in preprints of [randomized controlled trials],” the authors write.

Additional reading

Rise of the preprint: how rapid data sharing during COVID-19 has changed science forever , Nature Medicine, January 2022

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Naseem S. Miller

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We present haplotype-resolved reference genomes and comparative analyses of six ape species, namely: chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan, and siamang. We achieve chromosome-level contiguity with unparalleled sequence accuracy (<1 error in 500,000 base pairs), completely sequencing 215 gapless chromosomes telomere-to-telomere. We resolve challenging regions, such as the major histocompatibility complex and immunoglobulin loci, providing more in-depth evolutionary insights. Comparative analyses, including human, allow us to investigate the evolution and diversity of regions previously uncharacterized or incompletely studied without bias from mapping to the human reference. This includes newly minted gene families within lineage-specific segmental duplications, centromeric DNA, acrocentric chromosomes, and subterminal heterochromatin. This resource should serve as a definitive baseline for all future evolutionary studies of humans and our closest living ape relatives.

Competing Interest Statement

E.E.E. is a scientific advisory board (SAB) member of Variant Bio, Inc. C.T.W. is a co-founder/CSO of Clareo Biosciences, Inc. W.L. is a co-founder/CIO of Clareo Biosciences, Inc. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Co-creating and hosting PxP: a conference about patient engagement in research for and by patient partners

• Dawn P. Richards 1 , 2 , 3 ,
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Research Involvement and Engagement volume  10 , Article number:  77 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Research projects, initiatives and conferences that include patients as partners rather than as participants are becoming more common. Including patients as partners (what we will call ‘patient partners’) is an approach called patient engagement or involvement in research, and we will call it patient engagement throughout this paper. Patient engagement moves traditional health research conferences and events to include a broader audience for their knowledge exchange and community building efforts, beyond academics and healthcare professionals. However, there are few examples of conferences where patients are given the opportunity to fully lead. Our conference went beyond patient engagement – it was patient-led. Patient partners conceived, planned, and decided on all aspects of a virtual conference.

We present the work and processes we undertook throughout 2023 to create and produce a free conference called “PxP: For patients, by patients” or PxP for short, with a tagline of “Partnering to make research stronger.” PxP was patient-led and about patient engagement in research rather than a specific disease or condition. PxP was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis. The PxP website, known as the PxP Hub, now houses the conference recordings along with resources about patient engagement in research. These resources were recommended by the PxP Steering Committee members, speakers, and others who attended the 2023 conference. Here we lead you through how the idea for PxP was generated; how the international patient partner Steering Committee was convened and supported; how PxP was brought to life over nine months; the PxP 3-day event and feedback collected to improve future efforts; trade-offs, challenges and learnings; and resources required to support this type of event. We close with what the future holds for PxP in 2024 and beyond.

It’s time to elevate patients into leadership roles for conferences and events, and we encourage you to adopt the PxP ethos by using or adapting our approach and resources to support your opportunity.

Plain English summary

Patients are often included in health research as study participants. Involving patients as partners in research projects or conferences is becoming more common. This approach is called patient engagement or involvement. Traditional health research conferences are by and for academic researchers or healthcare professionals. These events rarely include patients as the main attendees or in the planning. While some research conferences are starting to use patient engagement, few are designed and led by patients. We share our work on a conference led and designed by patients. In 2023, our team co-created a free conference called “PxP.” PxP is short for “For patients, by patients.” The conference tagline was “Partnering to make research stronger.” PxP was focused on patient engagement in research rather than any one health problem. PxP was supported by the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis. This is one of 13 Canadian Institutes of Health Research. A free online PxP Hub now hosts all of the conference recordings and many resources. We share how the idea for PxP came about, how the international patient partner Steering Committee came together and was supported to plan and bring PxP to life, the PxP conference and feedback, challenges and what we learned, and resources needed. It’s time for patients to have a leadership role for conferences and events. Through sharing this example, we encourage others to adopt the PxP ethos.

Peer Review reports

While there are increasingly more research projects, initiatives and conferences that include patients as partners and not just participants, examples where patients fully lead are rare in these settings [ 1 , 2 ]. To date, most of the focus in these spaces has been on co-creation or co-production aspects. The approach of including patients as partners (which we call ‘patient partners’) is referred to as patient engagement (in North America) [ 1 ], patient involvement (in Europe) [ 3 ], or consumer involvement (in Australia) [ 4 ]. Here we use the term patient engagement as a ‘catch all’ for these phrases.

Health research conferences and events provide an opportunity for knowledge exchange and community building, though have traditionally been restricted to a narrow audience of academics and health professionals. While some conferences are patient-led through conception, design, delivery and dissemination, these tend to be patient organization-run conferences that offer support and education to their specific communities (e.g., arthritis, pain, cancer, etc.) [ 5 , 6 ]. To our knowledge, there is little in the academic literature about patient-led health research conferences [ 7 , 8 ] and we were unable to locate any literature about patient-led conferences on the topic of patient engagement in research.

Here we describe the processes to plan and organize a free conference all about patient engagement in research called “PxP: For Patients, by Patients” and share the outputs of the conference [ 9 ]. The conference’s tagline was “Partnering to Make Research Stronger.” The free PxP conference was virtually hosted in September 2023, and was fully designed and driven by an international Steering Committee of individuals who identify as patient partners [ 1 ]. PxP was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (IMHA) [ 10 ]. IMHA’s mandate includes supporting research related to: active living, mobility and the wide range of conditions related to bones, joints, muscles, connective tissue, skin as well as the mouth, teeth and craniofacial region. IMHA has a history of engaging patients as partners for over 20 years [ 11 ]. Recently, IMHA and its Patient Engagement Research Ambassadors (PERA) fully co-created and launched free, online learning modules as a How-To Guide for Patient Engagement in Research which is ‘disease agnostic,’ meaning that it is not specific to any one disease area [ 12 , 13 ]. PxP is another example of work that IMHA is supporting in the patient engagement in research space that is also disease agnostic.

This paper aims to describe what we did and learned following a planning and executing timeline so that people who are interested in elements of PxP may benefit when planning their own patient-led conferences or events. We detail the processes, provide templates and resources, and share our learnings by highlighting the expertise, time and other resources that were necessary to make PxP a success. In the spirit of PxP, this paper was co-written with many of its patient partner Steering Committee members (JB, SdS, TF, AH, LH, AP, SR, JT).

Below we outline the PxP conference process, including its inputs and outputs, in a manner that is linear to PxP’s overall planning and executing timeline.

Generating the idea for the PxP

The idea for the PxP conference came from conversations in 2022 with IMHA’s PERA members [ 12 ]. PERA is composed of individuals who live with conditions that fall under IMHA’s research mandate. PERA meets every 1–2 months virtually to provide bidirectional insights and lived experiences to help IMHA achieve its goals and priorities while also carrying out its own mandate. PERA’s mandate is to inform IMHA and CIHR of patient priorities in research; inform their respective communities about IMHA, CIHR, and their work with PERA; advocate to benchmark best practice in patient-oriented research (POR) across IMHA’s activities (including priority setting); curate quality POR assets (for example, videos, websites etc.) for IMHA and the broader CIHR community, and create new POR assets to fill gaps; and, evaluate progress of PERA [ 11 ]. PERA members who wished to contribute to the conference were invited to be part of the conference’s 2023 Steering Committee (SC; noting there were 6 PERA members at the time).

An initial discussion with interested PERA members (TF, LH, plus one other) was hosted in November 2022 to gain further insights. This initial conference discussion was supported by IMHA’s Scientific Director, a staff member, and a patient engagement consultant (DPR, who also identifies as a patient partner). Terms of reference for the SC were drafted (see Additional File 1 ) and a timeline of SC meetings with high-level agenda topics was created for internal IMHA purposes. The decision about the conference name was reserved for the patient-led SC. The only pre-determined parameters around the conference were that it would be: free, virtual, led by patient partners, about patient engagement in research, disease agnostic, and for patients (as a primary audience), though anyone would be welcome to attend (and those in academic roles heard about it through IMHA’s regular newsletter and other targeted newsletters). Patients being the primary audience was a decision purposefully made so that patients could explore topics about patient engagement that were most important to them in a safe space. After this meeting, in late 2022 and in early 2023, additional patient partners from across the globe were invited to be part of the SC (based on the diversity of their locations, experiences, etc.), with an aim to have a total of 10 members. SC members who were invited beyond PERA members were known to IMHA through various research and personal networks and social media interactions. One SC member left for personal reasons in spring 2023.

Bringing the PxP conference to life

An overview of the inputs and outputs of PxP 2023 (see Fig.  1 ) are described in more detail in the following sections.

PxP Inputs and Outputs. An overview is provided of the human, financial and operational resources as well as the expertise, insights and skills that went in to PxP 2023. The various outputs include the 3-day conference, a community, and learning and resources

Championing the patient-led ethos

The international SC first met virtually in February 2023 and then monthly (except August and September) until October 2023 [ 14 ]. Two hours were reserved for each virtual meeting. The initial conference concept and parameters were brought to the SC during the February meeting so they could develop their collective vision. The development of the conference was guided by the five PatientsIncluded™ criteria [ 15 ], and went beyond patient co-creation to patient leadership. As outlined below, all elements of the conference were decided by the SC and facilitated through IMHA resources (time, financial, and skills).

The SC meetings were facilitated by the IMHA patient engagement consultant (DPR) and were attended by additional members of the IMHA team as needed to capture relevant action points to fulfill the logistical needs of the conference. DPR developed draft agendas for each meeting (which were open to changes made by SC members), took meeting notes (finalized upon review at each subsequent meeting) and facilitated meetings to ensure meetings supported psychological safety, respect, transparency and collaboration [ 16 ]. If SC members could not attend meetings, they were invited to provide their ideas separately via email or to meet one on one with DPR who incorporated their ideas in to planning. Meetings were kept to a minimum to be respectful of SC members’ time and other commitments. SC members were provided regular updates via email about operational progress between meetings. Email updates also included communication assets (such as social media graphics) so that the SC could share news about PxP with their own networks and on social media; with the opportunity to request additional assets, information or communication support at any point.

All SC members were offered honoraria aligned with the IMHA Patient Engagement Compensation Guidelines, which were developed after this work started [ 17 ]. Honoraria covered all aspects of SC members’ work and contributions for conference planning, and additional honoraria were offered for their time to participate in and attend the conference even if they chose not to be part of the program. Offering honoraria to SC members aligns with principles of equity, diversity and inclusion, and with best practices related to patient engagement in research [ 18 ].

Determining the path of PxP

Launching a new conference and an associated community required a significant amount of work and a focus on both the big picture and the more detailed elements (more on resources required is provided near the end of the paper). The patient-led and operations elements throughout the course of the PxP are detailed in Table  1 . Over the course of conference planning, the SC decided on the following for the conference:

its name (For Patients, By Patients) which was shortened to PxP;

its goal of partnering to make research stronger;

its mission to bring resources, mentorship and community to other patient partners in any kind of health research, no matter their experiences as a patient partner;

its logo design and colours;

the dates, format and length;

its agenda, including each day’s themes, sub-themes and speakers;

the platform (Zoom Webinars);

the preferred communications channels (X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and newsletter); and,

the post-conference survey questions for attendees, hosts, moderators, and speakers.

Additionally, the SC advised on the PxP website (also called the PxP Hub) [ 19 ] by providing thoughts on: user journey, functionality, content and accessibility features. Each member also provided up to 3 resources about patient engagement in research that are posted on the site. The PxP website was created by an agency and is updated by an IMHA staff member.

Co-developing the program

The themes for each day of the conference and for the sessions themselves were selected based on several SC conversations at the monthly meetings. The conference agenda including each day’s theme and sessions is provided in Table  2 , with the full conference agenda that includes dates, times, hosts, moderators, and speakers/panelists in Additional File 2 . Day 1 was considered to be introductory to help equip attendees with the language and baseline knowledge necessary to get involved in patient and public engagement in research, as well as to get the most out of the program [ 20 ]. Day 2 was designed to highlight self-research (where speakers shared doing their own research on themselves as part of their own healthcare journeys), patient-led research, and researcher perspectives on the how and why of their patient engaged research [ 20 ]. On Day 3, the SC wanted to tackle difficult conversations around real-world challenges for patient partners and those who have historically been excluded from health research in the safe space of this patient-led conference, and finished with a session providing practical tips around knowledge dissemination and amplifying the impact of health research [ 20 ]. The themes and session topics were of importance to the SC as patient partners rather than those researchers thought would be important to them.

All SC members had multiple opportunities to suggest specific people or organizations as speakers. They also had the opportunity to be as involved or uninvolved as they wished with the program itself, including as hosts (opened and closed each day and handed each session over to the session moderator), moderators (facilitated sessions by introducing the topic, speakers, and asking audience questions), and speakers, or, if time-zones permitted, as attendees who contributed to the live chats and encouraged discussion amongst attendees. SC members also contributed to how each conference session would be structured, being purposeful about having different approaches to each session (some included presentations, most were moderated discussions). DPR collected, compiled and reviewed all suggestions, and then proposed a draft agenda with a number of options for speakers, which took in to account equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles [ 16 ]. This agenda was subject to additional discussion, changes, and then approval by the SC before speakers were invited.

Conference supports

SC members who participated as hosts, moderators, and speakers/panelists were supported by the IMHA staff and DPR, as were all other moderators and speakers/panelists. All hosts, moderators and speakers/panelists were offered monetary compensation for their time in preparing for and being involved in the conference, with the exception of those who had an academic appointment and whose involvement in such a conference was considered part of their role in academia. For each session of the conference, a meeting was set up and facilitated by DPR so the moderator and speakers/panelists of that session could meet and get to know one another in the month leading up to PxP. At these virtual meetings, logistics about the conference were reviewed and notes were taken that were provided back to attendees. In most cases, the participants worked together to co-create the session content (often with suggestions from SC members).

A ‘run of show’ was created in Google Docs and was shared with all SC members for comment. The ‘run of show’ included each day’s schedule, logistics comments for daily hosts to share with all PxP attendees at the start and close of each day, transitions to breaks, and notes for each session about how it would run, who the moderator and speakers were, etc. The daily hosts were encouraged to make the logistics comments and all commentary their own by copying and pasting content out of the Google Doc. The ‘run of show’ for each session was shared with each session’s moderator, speakers or panelists. Two drop-in sessions on different times and days (to accommodate a variety of time-zones) were offered to all session speakers or panelists and hosts the week before the conference as an opportunity to gain familiarity with the platform, ask logistical questions, and test out slide sharing functionality. Communications to moderators and speakers and panelists were intentionally minimized, but carefully crafted to ensure language was clear and support was available if needed. Formal and informal feedback indicated that hosts, moderators and speakers felt well-prepared for and supported at the conference.

Being purposeful about accessibility

The SC was clear about the importance of accessibility, that is removing barriers to attend and fully participate, being mindful that the conference audience would include people with a wide range of disabilities and access needs, including energy-limiting chronic illness and neurodivergence. Registrants were invited to contact the IMHA team to make it aware of any access or accommodation needs that were not being provided so that it could do its best to support them. The conference was free and the program was purposefully designed with 30-min breaks between sessions. The timings of the program were intended to suit people joining from different time-zones around the world, with Day 3 run during different hours to better include attendees and speakers in Oceania and parts of Asia. To help reduce the burden of converting between time-zones, a table was provided on the PxP website [ 21 ].

As an ongoing consideration to accessibility and inclusivity, all sessions were recorded (with consent) and are available to view directly on the PxP YouTube Channel [ 22 ] or via the PxP Hub [ 9 ]. Asynchronous viewing was considered important for those who could not join live (for example, due to time-zone, medical needs, or other responsibilities) or who would like to re-watch the sessions. The entire transcript was manually edited with Adobe Premiere Pro to help improve accuracy of closed captions. The Adobe software was available through an institutional subscription and there may be alternative options for those who do have access to this product. Anonymized chat summaries from the live sessions are also available for each day on the PxP Hub resource page.

Accessibility for all participants was a priority with the logo and website design, and highlighted in the logo brief and website scope of work. The logo and website have sufficient colour contrast to meet Web-Content Accessibility Guidelines and the colour palette was chosen to not be visually overwhelming for people with visual processing challenges [ 23 ]. The decision to exclude icons was purposeful; different images may not translate well between patient communities and across different cultures. An easy-to-read font was chosen. The premium version of UserWay was added to the site which includes a range of tools for users such as the ability to adjust font, line height or contrast; to pause animations; and to utilise a screen reader, reading mask or reading guide [ 24 ]. There can be limitations and problems that may arise from using automated accessibility overlays which should be investigated and understood before using one. A web page to explain these features and signpost to contact details for additional support is featured prominently on the main menu of the website [ 25 ]. The website is bilingual, offered in both of Canada’s official languages, English and French. Speaker biographies were provided in three different options, in recognition of different preferences or needs for content format: html, PDF with selectable text, and digital flipbook optimized for mobile devices [ 26 ].

The SC chose Zoom Webinars as the conference platform to help promote inclusivity given the familiarity that many people have with it. To keep things simple with the first PxP, a conscious decision was made to use Webinar without any breakout rooms or networking sessions. Attendee and speaker/panelist versions of a PxP 2023 Zoom Webinars guide were created with images to help people get set up at the conference [ 27 ]. See Additional File 3 for the attendee Zoom Webinar guide. A member of the IMHA logistics team was available throughout the conference as technical support for attendees, and a second Zoom room was set up for speaker/panelist questions. At the start of each day of the conference, the daily host provided information to attendees about supports provided and how to access them (e.g., closed captions for sessions, etc.). A Zoom Webinars background was automatically provided for speakers/panelists when they logged in to the webinar, and the colour was chosen to reduce brightness for those with visual processing needs. The logistics team ensured the Zoom platform had the live translated captions as an add-on in over 30 languages. While the addition of live interpreters in other languages including sign-language is preferred, this was not viable due to the number of countries and languages represented in the audience, the conference budget, and other resource considerations.

PxP live and feedback

PxP 2023 took place virtually on September 12, 13 and 14/15, 2023 UTC over a total of 4 h (including breaks) on each day (see Additional File 2 for the full agenda). There were a number of powerful quotes as takeaways from the sessions, some of which are provided in Table  3 . PxP 2023 had 617 registrants from 34 countries, with 310 live attendees self-identifying that they were from 18 countries (note SC members and IMHA staff are included in this number). Attendees were from around the globe including from North America (Canada, United States), South America (Brazil, Colombia), Europe (Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom), Asia (India, Israel), Africa (Nigeria), and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand). The majority of attendees were from Canada (57%), United States (18%), United Kingdom (11%) and Australia (7%), respectively. Attendees were provided the option at the start of each day to identify the perspective they brought in a Zoom poll (they were allowed to select more than one option), and in these polls (data are summarized across all 3 days), attendees identified themselves as a patient partner/person with lived experience (59%), a researcher (35%), a caregiver or relative (20%), a clinician (9%), or a trainee or student (6%).

One member of the IMHA team hosted Zoom Webinars and DPR was also on the ‘back-end’ of Zoom Webinars to support each session’s participants if/as required. SC members took on a variety of roles including as hosts, moderators, presenters, or active participants watching and participating in the Zoom chats. In addition to housekeeping, a Land Acknowledgement [ 28 ], and a bit of information about the day, daily hosts encouraged engagement from the start by asking the audience to respond to the Zoom poll mentioned above.

A graphic artist sketched each speaker/panelist in each day’s first session along with one of their quotes from the session. Once these sketches were signed off by the sketched speakers/panelists, they were shared on social media. There are plans to build on this idea for the 2024 conference by engaging an artist who identifies as a patient to do this for all sessions of the conference.

Attendee interactions and social media

Before the conference, all individuals who registered were provided with a link to a guide to make the most of Zoom Webinars and encouraged to share anything they wished in the chat and on social media with the hashtag #PxP23. At the start of each day, hosts provided introductory comments that included a short overview on using Zoom’s chat, question and answer (Q&A), and emoji functions, the latter to provide live feedback to hosts, speakers and moderators. These appeared to be successful tactics for audience participation as there was a great deal of commenting and sharing of resources in the chat, of emojis during presentations and conversations, and efforts made to include questions from the audience into each session (at the end for a dedicated question and answer session or throughout if the session was a moderated discussion). Since permission was not sought of attendees to copy and share the chats verbatim, two IMHA staff created anonymous summaries of each session’s chat comments and resources that were shared in the chat, which are available on PxP Hub in its resources section. [ 29 ].

Leading up to PxP, a newsletter and social media handles were created on Twitter/X (@PxPHub), Instagram (PxPHub), Threads (PxPHub), and LinkedIn (PxPHub). On the days of the event, PxP live updates and threads were shared primarily on X, in addition to Instagram Stories and LinkedIn. A social media graphic was prepared in advance to be used for event quotes and all images were shared with Alt text. In September 2023 (the month of the conference), the PxP X account gained 94.5 k organic (i.e., not paid for) impressions with a 2.4% engagement rate; on PxP LinkedIn, organic impressions were 3,859 with a 12.2% average engagement rate (which is the engagement rate for each post divided by the total number of posts). The newsletter has over 700 subscribers with an average open rate of 57% and an average click rate of 10%.

Between its launch on July 19, 2023, and December 31, 2023, the PxP website had 5.9 k unique visitors, 16.3 k page views, and an average visit duration of over 2 min. The top four countries for website views were Canada (46%), United States (20.9%), United Kingdom (12.3%) and Australia (9.5%), which mirrors the geographic makeup of PxP attendees. Most people were accessing the site directly (for example, through email share), followed by through X, Google, LinkedIn and Facebook. Other than the homepage, the most frequently accessed pages related to the event tickets and program and the PxP resource page, which is a collation of PxP and external resources.

All PxP 2023 session recordings were made available to view on the PxP YouTube Channel [ 22 ] following manual editing of the closed captions. Day 1 recordings were shared in September 2023, Day 2 recordings in October 2023, and Day 3 recordings in November 2023. As of December 31, 2023, the recordings have already garnered 546 views from over 200 unique viewers, with a combined watch time of 90.5 hours; the videos also have 2 k impressions (which is the times the video thumbnails were shown on YouTube) and an impressions click-through rate of 4.8%, this includes people who have been shown the content in their suggested videos, or Browse features (for example).

Conference feedback

A Project Ethics Community Consensus Initiative (ARECCI) framework was used to assess for and mitigate ethical risks for a survey of PxP participants (hosts, speakers, moderators, and attendees), including the four-step ARECCI Ethics Screening Tool and the ARECCI Ethics Guidelines [ 30 , 31 ]. The survey was deemed as minimal risk to participants and did not require review from a Research Ethics Board. All PxP participants (hosts, speakers/panelists, moderators and attendees) were provided a link to an online, voluntary, self-reported anonymous survey to complete. The survey included a consent statement at the beginning about the potential use of their results and open-ended responses for learning purposes or for publication purposes. Respondents could opt-out of their survey responses being used for publication purposes if they wished. The survey was issued using a modified Dillman’s method to achieve a better response rate [ 32 ].

All 310 attendees were invited to respond to a survey about the conference. One-hundred and thirty-seven (137) attendees voluntarily submitted survey responses (response rate of 44%). Of these respondents, 136 respondents consented to their responses being used for publication purposes and 1 respondent agreed for their responses only to be used for learning purposes, not for publication purposes. The survey results from the 136 attendees were overwhelmingly positive:

96% (130) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the themes and topics discussed were relevant to them;

96% (130) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed the question and discussion periods were well-organized and helpful in their learning;

74% (100) agreed or strongly agreed that there were opportunities to interact, engage and network with other attendees during the conference;

88% (120) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed they learned something new that will be useful in their future approach in patient partnership/engagement;

95% (129) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the conference environment was inclusive and safe;

95% (129) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would recommend the PxP conference to a friend or colleague;

95% (129) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with Zoom Webinars as the conference platform; and,

94% (128) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with the sessions they attended.

In response to 5 comments on main areas for improvement, increased diversity (gender, ethnicity, geography) for SC members and speakers will be a focus for PxP2024.

SC members were also issued a separate online survey based on the validated Patient and Public Engagement Evaluation Tool to respond to anonymously about their experiences of being a SC member between February to September 2023 [ 33 ]. This survey also had a consent statement at the start about potential uses of the survey data and from which respondents could opt-out. All 9 SC members responded anonymously to this survey. The results indicated that their experiences were positive overall with respect to planning and carrying out the conference. Overall, they indicated that the SC was a safe environment where they could express their views, they felt supported by IMHA in a number of ways (e.g., through being offered one on one meetings if they were unable to attend scheduled meetings), they felt that their feedback was taken into account by IMHA, and that they were proud of the conference. Like conference attendees, they felt that the SC’s diversity of experiences, ethnicity, gender, geography, etc., should be expanded in future years.

Trade-offs, challenges and learnings

The SC aimed to minimize the burden of registering for and attending the conference. The SC decided a conference platform was not necessary, and instead opted to use Zoom alone given familiarity with Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the SC considered the options of separate registrations and links for each session vs. each day of the conference, and opted to have each day run as one long Zoom Webinar. It was thought that this registration/link approach would minimize potential for confusion around different time-zones for an international event. With this approach, each attendee registered for each day and was provided with a personalized link for that day. Using Zoom Webinar meant that for the starting session of each day, session hosts and speakers/panelists were in a private Zoom Webinar room before the event went live and could prepare without the audience seeing or hearing them. However, after that first session and during breaks, new session speakers/panelists joined and if audience members kept their Zoom Webinar open, they were privy to these preparations. Using Zoom Webinar also meant that attendees could not direct message each other, rather only had the option to post to everyone in the chat. Visual messaging on the screen and in the chats was used during the breaks to let attendees know when sessions would start again. Even with these trade-offs, evaluation results and comments indicated that Zoom Webinar was an appropriate platform for PxP 2023.

Some audience members found the action in the Zoom Webinar chat during the sessions to be distracting and struggled to keep up with the amount of participation in the chat. Part of this may have had to do with how their chat settings were set up (some participants indicated that the chat kept ‘popping up’). For PxP 2024, some suggestions will be offered to deal with the chat and how it can be minimized, and attendees will be informed that the chats will be summarized (including the resources shared in the chats) and posted on the PxP resource hub after the conference.

Future conferences will see an increased diversity (gender, ethnicity, etc.) of the SC members and the invited speakers. Four survey comments indicated gender diversity is an area for improvement given they observed few who appeared to identify as men presenting in the sessions (note that organizers did not ask hosts, moderators or speakers/panelists to disclose their gender). A study of the demographics of patient partners in Canada indicates that this gender uniformity is fairly reflective of the patient partner demographic in many initiatives [ 34 ].

Even though this event was all about patient engagement in research and aimed to execute well on best practices, we experienced process challenges at IMHA’s home institution with respect to issuing honoraria for international participants. The IMHA team has developed an approach to minimize these process issues by working with its home institution for subsequent events.

Resource requirements

The conference required certain resources from IMHA. In addition to a financial budget, a conference platform, communication tools (e.g., a website, social media accounts, a newsletter, etc.), and human resources were required. Without these resources, it would have been difficult to host the same quality of PxP.

It is estimated that in addition to IMHA human resource costs (see below for information on time of various roles), the cost for the first PxP was approximately $27,500 CDN (all figures here in Canadian dollars). This amount includes honoraria offered to SC members (to attend meetings and for various roles in the conference) and all speakers/panelists ($20,000), building the website ($6,000, excluding an annual maintenance fee of $900), and the Zoom platform (~ $1,500). For PxP2024, the only item that will come off the budget is the cost to build the website.

While time commitment varied and especially ramped up closer to the conference itself, a number of IMHA team members contributed to the conference. The financial cost of these human resources is not provided as a dollar amount as this will vary for organizations. Balancing other IMHA-related work within her one-day a week commitment to IMHA (that is, less than 0.2 full time equivalents), DPR prepared materials for and hosted all SC meetings, met with SC members individually if they could not attend scheduled meetings, invited speakers and panelists, hosted 9 conference planning sessions/introductory meetings for sessions, attended the 2 pre-conference drop-ins for all speakers, hosts, and panelists, led developing the ‘run of show,’ shared information about the conference on social media and in her networks, and supported speakers, hosts and panelists on the back-end of Zoom Webinars each day of the conference. RT worked closely with DPR and attended all SC meetings and provided technical support for speakers, hosts and panelists at the conference. HM worked closely with DPR, attending most SC meetings, co-designed all communications and social media assets for the conference, coordinated all IMHA communications about the conference, coordinated PxP logo and website development, created all conference agendas and guides for using Zoom Webinar, etc., and hosted Zoom Webinar for the conference. HM’s time commitment was between 0.25–0.5 full time equivalents in the 6 months leading up to the conference. Another member of the IMHA team supported compensation processes for all SC members, speakers and panelists, through setting up individuals with a finance system and ensuring payments were received. And one other member of the IMHA team co-created the evaluation materials and uploaded them in to an online survey software (Qualtrics), and helped with analyzing all survey results. KK supported the entire project by attending SC meetings, the conference itself, and allowing IMHA resources to be used to support the PxP.

Next steps for PxP and beyond

Planning for PxP 2024 has already started, and PxP will continue until at least 2025 with IMHA support. Beyond 2025, a new Scientific Director will be appointed to IMHA (Scientific Directors’ terms are for a maximum of 8 years, with the current Scientific Director completing his term in 2025), and their support for PxP is not guaranteed. With a commitment to provide new patient partners the opportunity to plan and participate in the conference, a new SC is being formed for 2024 with efforts to expand its diversity (patient partner experience, gender, ethnicity, geography, etc.), and based on suggestions made by 2023’s SC members. The 2023 SC has become an Alumnus Committee and their interaction with the 2024 SC and involvement in PxP 2024 will be decided by the incoming SC. As was the case with the 2023 event, the 2024 SC will decide on all aspects of the conference, building on the successes and learning from the challenges of PxP 2023.

As individuals who were involved in designing and executing PxP, we encourage others to use the PxP template and build on it to find ways to support and create conferences and events for patients and by patients. Support may take the form of any of a number of resources, such as people, funding, and skills. One of the main challenges for patients planning and carrying out their own conferences is funding, and we urge organizations to consider how they can provide this type of financial support. There may also be more innovative partnership models waiting to be created and learned from.

Conclusions

We present work we undertook throughout 2023 to co-create and produce PxP, a conference for patients and by patients, all about patient engagement in research, and its associated PxP Hub. We share how the conference prioritized the patient partner community and accessibility, and provided an opportunity for knowledge exchange and nuanced discussions on all aspects of patient engagement in research. The conference has convened an active community of over 700 people that we hope will grow. We aim to engage in future events, with a deeper focus on equity, diversity and inclusion. In addition to working with knowledgeable patients who have their own networks, having support (funding, project management and communications skills and expertise, people, etc.) is required to carry out such an event. The time is now to elevate patients into leadership roles for conferences and events. We encourage you to adopt the PxP ethos by using or adapting our approach and resources to support this model.

Availability of data and materials

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis

Patient Engagement in Research Ambassadors

Patient-Oriented Research

For Patients, by Patients

Steering Committee

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Eileen Davidson as a Steering Committee member of PxP 2023, Eunice Lui for her work related to the conference evaluation, and Mike Brennan for his speaker sketches.

All SC members who are authors were offered an honorarium for their involvement in developing and writing this paper.

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Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dawn P. Richards, Hetty Mulhall, Rosie Twomey & Karim M. Khan

Five02 Labs Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada

Dawn P. Richards

Patient Partner and Patient Author, Toronto, ON, Canada

Patient Partner and Patient Author, Fraser, CO, USA

Joletta Belton

Patient Partner and Patient Author, London, UK

Savia de Souza

Patient Partner and Patient Author, Halifax, NS, Canada

Trudy Flynn

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Alex Haagaard

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Linda Hunter

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Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI), Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

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Contributions

DPR, HM and RT led conception of the work, DPR convened the writing group and discussions (JB, SdS, TF, AH, LH, KK, HM, AP, SR, JT, RT). DPR led writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the design, analysis of the work and in writing and revising the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Authors’ information

We have not filled in the GRIPP2 for this commentary as a number of the authors identify as patient partners. All author contributions are noted above. The following authors can be found and tagged on X: DPR (@TO_dpr), TF (@trudyflynn_), AH (@alexhaagaard), LH (@lhunter1310), HM (@HettyMulhall), AP (@AmyPricePhD), JT (@Hassanah2017).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dawn P. Richards .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

A Project Ethics Community Consensus Initiative (ARECCI) framework was used to assess for and mitigate ethical risks for a survey of PxP participants (attendees, hosts, session participants) as well as SC members, including the four-step ARECCI Ethics Screening Tool and the ARECCI Ethics Guidelines. The surveys were deemed as minimal risk to participants, and did not require review from a Research Ethics Board. The surveys were answered anonymously (no identifying information was collected) and voluntary, and there was a consent statement before the survey start so they could opt out of if they wished.

Consent for publication

Individuals who chose to complete the survey (see above) were consented for their results to be part of a discussion in a publication. One person did not consent to their survey results being used for this purpose, and their results were removed from those discussed in this paper.

Competing interests

DPR is a full-time employee of Five02 Labs, Inc., and is under contract to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis to support its patient engagement efforts.

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Supplementary Information

Additional file 1. steering committee terms of reference., 40900_2024_603_moesm2_esm.pdf.

Additional file 2. Full version of the conference agenda which includes dates, times, hosts, session names and their respective moderators and speakers.

40900_2024_603_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Additional file 3. Zoom Webinar Guide that was created for conference attendees to make the most of attending the conference on the Zoom Webinar platform.

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Richards, D.P., Mulhall, H., Belton, J. et al. Co-creating and hosting PxP: a conference about patient engagement in research for and by patient partners. Res Involv Engagem 10 , 77 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00603-0

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00603-0

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• > Microsoft

Dangerous XSS Bugs in RedCAP Threaten Academic & Scientific Research Dangerous XSS Bugs in RedCAP Threaten Academic & Scientific Research

The security vulnerabilities, CVE-2024-37394, CVE-2024-37395, and CVE-2024-37396, could lay open proprietary and sensitive research to data thieves.

July 31, 2024

Researchers have discovered three cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), a Web application developed by Vanderbilt University and used for building and managing online surveys and databases for scientific and academic researchers.

The vulnerabilities are tracked as CVE-2024-37394, CVE-2024-37395, and CVE-2024-37396, and they "could allow attackers to execute malicious JavaScript code in victims' browsers, potentially compromising sensitive data," according to an advisory from Trustwave's SpiderLabs.

Researchers there identified the vulnerabilities in multiple locations within version 13.1.9 in REDCap, which is popular in universities and scientific institutions for managing studies that contain private, sensitive information. The vulnerable locations in the platform include calendar events, public surveys, and project dashboards.

"Our researchers developed proof-of-concept exploits for each vulnerable location," the researchers wrote . "In each case, they were able to inject a simple JavaScript payload that, when triggered, executes an alert displaying the document domain."

The vulnerabilities could allow threat actors to steal sensitive information, impersonate the victim's actions, manipulate the REDCap application, and even gain access to protected data.

It's recommended that users update to REDCap version 14.2.1 or later, where Vanderbilt University has addressed these bugs, to mitigate these flaws. 

About the Author(s)

Dark Reading Staff

Dark Reading

Dark Reading is a leading cybersecurity media site.

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Researchers discover a new form of scientific fraud: Uncovering 'sneaked references'

by Lonni Besançon and Guillaume Cabanac, The Conversation

A researcher working alone—apart from the world and the rest of the wider scientific community—is a classic yet misguided image. Research is, in reality, built on continuous exchange within the scientific community: First you understand the work of others, and then you share your findings.

Reading and writing articles published in academic journals and presented at conferences is a central part of being a researcher. When researchers write a scholarly article, they must cite the work of peers to provide context, detail sources of inspiration and explain differences in approaches and results. A positive citation by other researchers is a key measure of visibility for a researcher's own work.

But what happens when this citation system is manipulated? A recent Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology article by our team of academic sleuths—which includes information scientists, a computer scientist and a mathematician—has revealed an insidious method to artificially inflate citation counts through metadata manipulations: sneaked references.

Hidden manipulation

People are becoming more aware of scientific publications and how they work, including their potential flaws. Just last year more than 10,000 scientific articles were retracted . The issues around citation gaming and the harm it causes the scientific community, including damaging its credibility, are well documented.

Citations of scientific work abide by a standardized referencing system: Each reference explicitly mentions at least the title, authors' names, publication year, journal or conference name, and page numbers of the cited publication. These details are stored as metadata, not visible in the article's text directly, but assigned to a digital object identifier, or DOI—a unique identifier for each scientific publication.

References in a scientific publication allow authors to justify methodological choices or present the results of past studies, highlighting the iterative and collaborative nature of science.

However, we found through a chance encounter that some unscrupulous actors have added extra references, invisible in the text but present in the articles' metadata, when they submitted the articles to scientific databases. The result? Citation counts for certain researchers or journals have skyrocketed, even though these references were not cited by the authors in their articles.

Chance discovery

The investigation began when Guillaume Cabanac, a professor at the University of Toulouse, wrote a post on PubPeer , a website dedicated to post-publication peer review, in which scientists discuss and analyze publications. In the post, he detailed how he had noticed an inconsistency: a Hindawi journal article that he suspected was fraudulent because it contained awkward phrases had far more citations than downloads, which is very unusual.

The post caught the attention of several sleuths who are now the authors of the JASIST article . We used a scientific search engine to look for articles citing the initial article. Google Scholar found none, but Crossref and Dimensions did find references. The difference? Google Scholar is likely to mostly rely on the article's main text to extract the references appearing in the bibliography section, whereas Crossref and Dimensions use metadata provided by publishers.

A new type of fraud

To understand the extent of the manipulation, we examined three scientific journals that were published by the Technoscience Academy, the publisher responsible for the articles that contained questionable citations.

Our investigation consisted of three steps:

• We listed the references explicitly present in the HTML or PDF versions of an article.
• We compared these lists with the metadata recorded by Crossref, discovering extra references added in the metadata but not appearing in the articles.
• We checked Dimensions, a bibliometric platform that uses Crossref as a metadata source, finding further inconsistencies.

In the journals published by Technoscience Academy, at least 9% of recorded references were "sneaked references." These additional references were only in the metadata, distorting citation counts and giving certain authors an unfair advantage. Some legitimate references were also lost, meaning they were not present in the metadata.

In addition, when analyzing the sneaked references, we found that they highly benefited some researchers. For example, a single researcher who was associated with Technoscience Academy benefited from more than 3,000 additional illegitimate citations. Some journals from the same publisher benefited from a couple hundred additional sneaked citations.

We wanted our results to be externally validated, so we posted our study as a preprint , informed both Crossref and Dimensions of our findings and gave them a link to the preprinted investigation. Dimensions acknowledged the illegitimate citations and confirmed that their database reflects Crossref's data. Crossref also confirmed the extra references in Retraction Watch and highlighted that this was the first time that it had been notified of such a problem in its database. The publisher, based on Crossref's investigation, has taken action to fix the problem.

Implications and potential solutions

Why is this discovery important? Citation counts heavily influence research funding, academic promotions and institutional rankings. Manipulating citations can lead to unjust decisions based on false data. More worryingly, this discovery raises questions about the integrity of scientific impact measurement systems, a concern that has been highlighted by researchers for years. These systems can be manipulated to foster unhealthy competition among researchers, tempting them to take shortcuts to publish faster or achieve more citations.

To combat this practice we suggest several measures:

• Rigorous verification of metadata by publishers and agencies like Crossref.
• Independent audits to ensure data reliability.
• Increased transparency in managing references and citations.

This study is the first, to our knowledge, to report a manipulation of metadata. It also discusses the impact this may have on the evaluation of researchers. The study highlights, yet again, that the overreliance on metrics to evaluate researchers, their work and their impact may be inherently flawed and wrong.

Such overreliance is likely to promote questionable research practices, including hypothesizing after the results are known, or HARKing ; splitting a single set of data into several papers, known as salami slicing; data manipulation; and plagiarism. It also hinders the transparency that is key to more robust and efficient research. Although the problematic citation metadata and sneaked references have now been apparently fixed, the corrections may have, as is often the case with scientific corrections , happened too late.

Provided by The Conversation

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• research associate laboratory research macromolecular science engineering 2

Research Associate (Laboratory Research) - Macromolecular Science & Engineering

Date: August 2024

Title: Research Associate (Laboratory Research)

Department: Macromolecular Science & Engineering

School: Case School of Engineering

Location: Kent Hale Smith

Supervisor Name and Title: Ica Manas-Zloczower, Professor

POSITION OBJECTIVE

The Manas-Zloczower lab focuses on engineering new materials and technologies for industrial applications. The Research Associate will execute research projects with the aim of developing innovative, next generation nanocomposities with properties enhanced by nanofillers and through the application of various processing strategies. Research will also explore the potential use of crosslink points in either the soft or the hard domains of thermoplastic polyurethanes to affect system morphology and properties. Under the guidance of the PI, the Research Associate is expected to work independently, design and plan projects, oversee collaborations, supervise students and carry out research activities of an assigned project through completion. The Research Associate will utilize techniques of polymer synthesis, processing and characterization. The Research Associate will keep the PI informed of progress of research projects and provide recommendations on experimental design. The Research Associate will also present data and findings at lab and scientific meetings, seminars, etc., prepare manuscripts, and contribute preliminary data for grant proposals. 

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Plan and execute experiments for research projects designed by the principal investigator and may design experiments independently and in collaboration with the PI. Assist with and coordinate experiments performed by other lab members, ensuring adequate resources, assisting with experimental design and analysis. Oversee progress of the research projects and provide regular progress reports to the PI; and provide input and recommendation to principal investigator regarding significant developments in research projects. Ensure the PI is informed about the results of lab members, and ensure the PI’s experimental strategy is explored by lab members and through independent experiments by the Research Associate. ( 60%)

• Assist the PI in and independently develop new techniques and protocols. Train lab members on new techniques.(10%) 
• Mentor and train graduate students; oversee research work and ensure projects are being completed according to the research plan. This will involve teaching other members of the lab techniques and scientific discovery methods, including students and post-docs. Assist and teach both established and new research techniques to other lab members to facilitate their experiments.(10%)
• Present data and findings at laboratory meetings and scientific meetings, seminars, etc. Prepare manuscripts, and contribute preliminary data for grant proposals.(20%)

NONESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Perform other duties as assigned.

Department: Frequent contact with PI and lab members, may work with other faculty for collaboration of research projects, contact with administrative staff as needed

University: Regular/Occasional contact with other labs for collaboration, Contact with other departments as needed    

External: Supply vendors, other institutions, funding agencies, etc. as needed

Students: Undergraduate and graduate student employees working in the lab

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITY

No direct supervisory responsibilities. Will train and provide oversight to students.

QUALIFICATIONS

Experience: Ph.D. in a relevant field (e.g, Chemical Engineering, Polymer Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science, etc.) Minimum of 1 to 2 years of related postdoctoral experience required.

REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS and ABILITIES

• Excellent analytical skills; ability to formulate findings and recommendations from the analysis.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills and interpersonal skills; must demonstrate the ability to effectively and professionally communicate and work with various individuals within and external to the University.
• Strong organization skills; ability to multi-task, prioritize, and meet deadlines.  Must demonstrate attention to detail and accuracy, time management skills, and follow-through. Must be able to work under pressure and conform to shifting priorities, demands, and timeline.    
• Ability to work effectively independently and collaboratively within a team.  Must be highly motivated, responsible, dependable, and a self-starter.
• Effective problem-solving skills; must demonstrate innovation and creativity, sound judgment, and good decision-making. 

DIVERSITY STATEMENT

In employment, as in education, Case Western Reserve University is committed to Equal Opportunity and Diversity.  Women, veterans, members of underrepresented minority groups, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Qualified applicants should send their CV to Dr. Ica Manas-Zloczower @ [email protected]