Chawla 2017 Nature
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| Chawla DS (2017) When a preprint becomes the final paper. Nature Doi:10.1038/nature.2017.21333. |
Abstract: A geneticist's decision not to publish his finalized preprint in a journal gets support from scientists online. Preprint papers posted on servers such as arXiv and bioRxiv are designed to get research results out for discussion before they are formally peer reviewed and published in journals. But for some scientists, the term is now a misnomer — their preprint papers will never be submitted for formal publication.
• Bioblast editor: Gnaiger E
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Preprints
Selected quotations
- 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]. Another major concern is based on a certain interpretation of the Ingelfinger rule: scientists should not publish the same manuscript twice [Altman L (1996) The Ingelfinger rule, embargoes, and journal peer review - part 1. The Lancet 347:1382–6]. A preprint is simply a document that allows ideas to spread and be discussed, it is not yet formally validated by the peer-review system. This is why almost all the major publishers in biology are preprint-friendly, including: Nature Publishing Group, PLOS, BMC, PNAS, Elsevier, and Springer (Table 2).
- The ongoing discussions on the publication process, peer review, and alternative publication models are all symptoms of the current uneasiness with the ever-growing obsession with bibliographic metrics such as the impact factor [Fisher J, Ritchie E, Hanspach J (2012) Academia's obsession with quantity. Trends Ecol Evol 27:473–4].
- Researchers are pressured to orient their publication strategy to maximize their number of publications and total citations. A well-known consequence is to submit manuscripts first to the most prestigious journals, and then resubmit to “lower level” journals as they are rejected. The numerous negative impacts of such behavior have been discussed in depth [Hochberg M, Chase J, Gotelli N, Hastings A, Naeem S (2009) The tragedy of the reviewer commons. Ecol Lett 12: 2–4] and include a long delay between the time a manuscript is finished and its publication. Research activities and the publication process are drifting away from their fundamental objective, namely the diffusion of novel scientific discoveries.
- In practice, the peer-review system is not only used to evaluate scientific quality but also to judge pertinence. On the other hand, preprints are not filtered, neither for their quality nor their pertinence. Widespread adoption of preprint servers has the potential to shift the diffusion strategy: journals would remain important to validate publications, but the relevance of a study should only be judged by many more readers than the typical two–four anonymous reviewers. With a shift in the diffusion strategy, the role of traditional journals and their editors would be to showcase scientific discoveries for specialized readership.
- With increasingly stringent peer review, the quality of published papers can improve at the cost of an increased load on authors and reviewers and greater delays for publication. Preprints are simply bypassing this model for what we believe is the progress of science: they speed up the dissemination of scientific discoveries and put on readers' shoulders the responsibility to judge originality and pertinence.
