Preprints – what are they and what do you think about using them?

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of making scientific research findings available quickly. This enables other scientists to build on these findings. It also means that policymakers can use the findings to develop policies; in a pandemic, governments can’t wait a year or more while papers are peer-reviewed, edited and published before issuing rules aimed at slowing the spread of a highly infectious virus.

Preprints – versions of scientific papers before they have been edited, peer reviewed or formally published – have played an important role in bridging this gap. Although the idea of authors sharing preprints of their articles has been around for decades and has been popular in maths and computer science for many years, it has gained much wider attention in recent years, especially for rapid sharing of health information.

Many scholarly publishers are now happy for researchers to post their articles on preprint servers before submitting them for publication and some actively encourage or even insist that researchers do this. Some editors also look at popular preprints and invite the authors to submit versions of their articles to journals.

But there are some challenges too. Preprints have not been peer reviewed or edited so readers need to bear this in mind when reading and citing preprints or using the findings in their own research. And some researchers and journals may be concerned about making papers public before they are published.

I am currently writing an article about preprints for the magazine Research Information and I want to know what you think.

• Do you feel confident about what preprints are and the role they play in scientific communication?
• Do you share preprints of your articles before submitting them to journals? Why, or why not?
• Do you find preprints a useful source of the latest scientific information or do you worry about using them or find them difficult to find or use?

If you would like to comment on any of these questions or with any other thoughts about preprints to potentially be included in my article, please leave your comment below or email me at sianharris8@gmail.com by the end of the day tomorrow. Do include your country and subject area – and do let me know if you would like me to include your name in your quote or leave it anonymous. Thank you for your help!