Preprint Abstracts in Times of Crisis: a Comparative Study with the Pre-pandemic Period

Authors : Frédérique Bordignon, Liana Ermakova, Marianne Noel

The urgency to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak has driven an unprecedented surge in preprints that aim to speed up knowledge dissemination as they are available much sooner than peer-reviewed publications.

In this study we consider abstracts of research articles and preprints as main entry points that draw attention to the most important information of the document and that try to entice us to read the whole article. In this paper, we try to capture and examine shifts in scientific abstract writing produced at the very beginning of the pandemic.

We made a comparative study of abstracts in terms of their informativeness associated with preprints issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and those produced in 2019, the closest pre-pandemic period. Our results clearly differ from one preprint server to another and show that there are community-centered habits as regards writing and reporting results.

The preprints issued from the arXiv, ChemRxiv and Research Square servers tend to have more informative (generous) abstracts than the ones submitted to the other servers. In four servers, the ratio of structured abstracts decreases with the pandemic.

URL : Preprint Abstracts in Times of Crisis: a Comparative Study with the Pre-pandemic Period

Original location : https://hal-enpc.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03187900

Preprints in Chemistry: An Exploratory Analysis of Differences with Journal Articles

Author : Mario Pagliaro

The exploratory analysis of the differences between preprints and the corresponding peer reviewed journal articles for ten studies first published on ChemRxiv and on Preprints, though statistically non-significant, suggests outcomes of relevance for chemistry researchers and educators.

The full transition to open science requires new education of doctoral students and young researchers on scholarly communication in the digital age.

The preliminary findings of this study will contribute to inform the curriculum of the aforementioned new courses for young chemists, eventually promoting accelerated innovation in a science that, unique amid all basic sciences, originates a huge industry central to the wealth of nations.

URL : Preprints in Chemistry: An Exploratory Analysis of Differences with Journal Articles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9010005