Desjardins-Proulx 2013 PLOS Biol
| Desjardins-Proulx P, White EP, Adamson JJ, Ram K, Poisot T, Gravel D (2013) The case for open preprints in biology. PLoS Biol 11:e1001563. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001563. |
Desjardins-Proulx P, White EP, Adamson JJ, Ram K, Poisot T, Gravel D (2013) PLOS Biol
Abstract: Public preprint servers allow authors to make manuscripts publicly available before, or in parallel to, submitting them to journals for traditional peer review. The rationale for preprint servers is fundamentally simple: to make the results of research available to the scientific community as soon as possible, instead of waiting until the peer-review process is fully completed. Sharing manuscripts using preprint servers has numerous advantages, including: 1) rapid dissemination of work-in-progress to a wider audience; 2) immediate visibility of the research output for early-career scientists; 3) improved peer review by encouraging feedback from the entire research community; and 4) a fair and straightforward way to establish precedence.
Despite the success of this approach in other fields, most manuscripts in biology are not posted to preprint servers and are therefore not seen by more than a handful of other scientists prior to publication. In this article, we highlight the advantages of open preprint servers for both scientists and publishers, discuss the preprint policies of major publishers in biology, and describe the main options to publish preprints.
• Bioblast editor: Gnaiger E
Labels:
Preprints
Selected quotations
- The current system of hiding manuscripts before acceptance poses problems for both scientists and publishers. Manuscripts that are unknown cannot be used and thus take more time to be cited. It has been shown that high-energy physics, with its high arXiv submission rate, has the highest immediacy among physics and mathematics [Prakasan E, Sagar A, Kalyane V, Kumar A, Harnad S (2005) Minimum impact and immediacy of citations to physics open archives of arXiv.org: Science Citation Index based reports. CogPrints 4272]. Immediacy measures how quickly articles are cited.
- Public preprints can be crucial to early-career scientists. The delay before publication is seldom compatible with the pressure to show an impressive publication record when applying for a scholarship or a position. Increasing the perceived value of preprints as close, or equal, to journal articles will allow young researchers to put their research outcome in the open, and build a reputation for themselves through the diffusion of their work without fear that this work will not be recognized by grant or job committees.
- Posting manuscripts as preprints also has the potential to improve the quality of science by allowing prepublication feedback from a large pool of reviewers. .. These “friendly” reviews increase the chance of errors being caught prior to publication.
- In contrast to other disciplines, the field of biology has effectively no preprint culture, with the exception of small pockets of primarily highly quantitative research (e.g., epidemiology, population genetics). While submitting to preprint servers has become more common in the past few years, the number of biology papers submitted to preprint servers still represents only a small fraction of the total research produced in biology (Figure 2).
- There are a number of reasons why biologists have not developed a culture of sharing preprints, many of which are based on common misconceptions. For example, in contrast to other fields, there is a perception in biology that public preprints make it easier to steal ideas [Ginsparg P (2011) ArXiv at 20. Nature 476:145–7]. In other fields, preprints serve the opposite role: they allow straightforward establishment of precedence, letting a researcher lay claim to an idea, thus preventing it from being “stolen” [Ginsparg P (2011) ArXiv at 20. Nature 476:145–7].
