COVID-19 and the Acceptance of Preprints in Health Sciences Publishing

Abstract

Background

A “preprint” is a scholarly or scientific manuscript shared online by its authors in its pre-peer reviewed form. The paper is posted on a preprint server before other researchers have had a chance to review its methods and claims through peer review. Preprints are posted by the authors before, or sometimes simultaneously with, submission to traditional peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Preprints have gained increased visibility and influence in life and health sciences publishing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and there are signs that life and health sciences publishing is approaching a tipping point in preprints’ acceptance among healthcare workers. Is life and health sciences publishing seeing an evolution of attitudes regarding the use of preprints as a result of COVID-19, or will preprints remain the domain of the hard and social sciences?

Purpose

This paper examines the history of preprints in scientific literature, including the differing use of preprints by discipline and the ethical challenges presented by their acceptance. The results of a survey of healthcare workers, in which attitudes toward preprints and the influence COVID-19 has had on healthcare workers’ opinions were measured, are presented.

Methods

A cross‐sectional survey was conducted using a web‐based survey tool. This article also draws upon the author’s experience in the publishing industry. The author’s recommendations are based on both the survey results and personal experience.

Findings

Of the respondents, 65% disliked preprints, and 35% were in favor of their use. Notably, the favorability of preprints was positively influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic among those already accepting of preprints; the pandemic has increased their belief in the value of preprints. Consumers of healthcare research were more open to preprints than the researchers themselves.

Conclusions

Although preprints do not seem set to become standard practice in scholarly life sciences and healthcare publishing, clearly there are signs of their increased use and acceptance: the growth of preprint servers in the past few years, the number of survey respondents indicating more acceptance of preprints due to COVID-19, and the dramatic increase in preprint submissions starting in the first half of 2020—all indicating preprints’ growing relevance. Publishers can learn from the rapid developments of the past few years and take steps to make preprints, as well as traditional journal publishing, work for the benefit of all.