Étiquette : Preprint

Catégories
EN

The Role of Preprints in Neuroscience Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis

Authors : Behrooz Rasuli, Fatemeh Seyfzadeh, Aurore Thibaut, Olivia Gosseries

Preprints, scientific manuscripts publicly shared prior to peer-review, are now part of scholarly 25 communication as emerging information resources. While neuroscience researchers have increasingly 26 published preprints, the impact of preprints in this field remains unclear.

Through a bibliometric 27 approach, this case study explored preprint citation patterns. Results yielded over 33,000 citations to 28 preprints within Scopus-indexed neuroscience documents (1993-2022). Trends of citations and 29 citation motivations were investigated. Findings indicated that 1.62% of neuroscience publications 30 cited at least one preprint, with citations peaking at 6% in 2021.

Review and journal articles cited 31 preprints more frequently, compared to books, notes, and conference papers (X² = 1909.015, p < 32 0.001). The most commonly cited servers were bioRxiv, arXiv, medRxiv, and PsyArXiv. Regarding 33 journals, a moderate positive correlation (rs = 0.353, p < 0.01) was found between publications citing 34 preprints and journals’ CiteScores.

Using Scite.ai, 93% of citations were classified as ‘mentioning,’ 35 with considerably fewer being supporting or contrasting. Most preprint citations appeared in 36 Introduction and Discussion, highlighting their role in framing research questions and contextualizing 37 results.

The global overview of these results may help contextualize citation behavior in relation to 38 structural and cultural factors, such as disciplinary norms, policy frameworks, researchers’ attitudes, 39 and health emergencies.

URL : The Role of Preprints in Neuroscience Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/QSS.a.490

Catégories
EN

Researchers’ Views on Preprints and Open Access Publishing: Results From a Free-Answer Survey of Japanese Molecular Biologists

Authors : Harufumi Tamazawa, Kazuki Ide, Kazuhisa Kamegai

A survey conducted in 2022 amongst members of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan (n = 633) about preprints and open access journals included qualitative data from free-response answers (n = 161). Analysis of the free-form responses suggests that researchers believe that peer review of papers is the foundation for ensuring the credibility of research content.

The trust-building mechanism achieved through peer review shapes the research community. For this reason, researchers are extremely cautious about preprints that have not undergone peer review within their own fields.

This foundation has fostered a sense of responsibility within the community, and this sense of responsibility, which is being fulfilled by ensuring the quality of research, is a mixture of both a sense of responsibility towards the community itself and a sense of responsibility towards the outside world, namely the relationship between researchers and society.

Researchers also appear to view the rise in Article Processing Charges (APCs) as a problem for the entire community, rather than simply an issue for individual researchers. In the field of molecular biology, where collaborative research between universities and companies is common, differences in normative awareness based on position are reflected in the various attitudes towards preprints and open access.

URL : Researchers’ Views on Preprints and Open Access Publishing: Results From a Free-Answer Survey of Japanese Molecular Biologists

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2039

Catégories
EN

Preprint policies across journals and publishers in ecology and evolutionary biology

Authors : Marija Purgar, Edward R. Ivimey-Cook, Antica Culina, Joshua D. Wallach

Preprints have the potential to accelerate knowledge dissemination and promote transparency in ecology and evolutionary biology. However, concerns about journal policies regarding prior publication may discourage researchers from preprinting their manuscripts.

Therefore, we identified 230 eligible ecology and evolutionary biology journals, published by 69 different publishers, and assessed both their journal- and publisher-level preprint policies. At the journal level, 119 (51.7%) of the 230 journals included preprint policies in their author guidelines—either through journal-specific policies (109, 47.4%) or by directly referencing their publisher’s preprint policies (10, 4.3%).

Overall, 116 (97.5%) of these journals were supportive of considering preprints for publication. At the publisher level, 26 (37.7%) of the 69 publishers had explicit preprint policies, all of which supported considering preprints for publication. There were 38 (16.5%) journals without journal- or publisher-level preprint policies.

While most journals and publishers were supportive of considering preprints for publication, instructions for authors, such as acceptable locations for posting preprints, timing of preprint posting relative to manuscript submission and requirements to link preprints to final published articles, were lacking.

These findings highlight opportunities for ecology and evolutionary biology journals, along with their publishers, to clarify and refine their preprint policies and instructions for authors.

URL : Preprint policies across journals and publishers in ecology and evolutionary biology

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.0524

Catégories
EN

The role of preprints in open science: Accelerating knowledge transfer from science to technology

Authors : Zhiqi Wang, Yue Chen, Chun Yang

Preprints have become increasingly essential in the landscape of open science, facilitating not only the exchange of knowledge within the scientific community but also bridging the gap between science and technology.

However, the impact of preprints on technological innovation, given their unreviewed nature, remains unclear. This study fills this gap by conducting a comprehensive scientometric analysis of patent citations to bioRxiv preprints submitted between 2013 and 2021, measuring and accessing the contribution of preprints in accelerating knowledge transfer from science to technology.

Our findings reveal a growing trend of patent citations to bioRxiv preprints, with a notable surge in 2020, primarily driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Preprints play a critical role in accelerating innovation, not only expedite the dissemination of scientific knowledge into technological innovation but also enhance the visibility of early research results in the patenting process, while journals remain essential for academic rigor and reliability. w

The substantial number of post-online-publication patent citations highlights the critical role of the open science model-particularly the « open access » effect of preprints-in amplifying the impact of science on technological innovation.

This study provides empirical evidence that open science policies encouraging the early sharing of research outputs, such as preprints, contribute to more efficient linkage between science and technology, suggesting an acceleration in the pace of innovation, higher innovation quality, and economic benefits.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.20225

Catégories
EN

Exploring scholarly perceptions of preprint servers

Authors : Shir Aviv-Reuven, Jenny Bronstein, Ariel Rosenfeld

Introduction

Preprint servers play an important role in scholarly communication.  The study investigates scholars’ engagement, experiences, and perceptions regarding the use of these servers, both as information sources and publishing venues. This qualitative study seeks to extend our understanding of how these servers operate within the academic ecosystem and influence scholarly communication.

Method

Data was collected through 32 semi-structured interviews with scholars from different disciplines, to explore their engagement, experiences and perceptions in using these platforms.

Analysis

The data collected from these interviews underwent thematic content analysis using ATLAS.ti software. This analysis facilitated the organization and thematic examination of the textual narratives derived from the interviews.

Results

In this study, scholars discussed their perceptions about the benefits of using preprint servers in scholarly work such as rapid dissemination of information and open access, but also raised concerns regarding the lack of peer review for the studies uploaded to these servers.

Conclusion

These findings emphasize the growing, yet diverse, role preprint servers play in scholarly communication and their differential impact across academic disciplines.

URL : Exploring scholarly perceptions of preprint servers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.47989/ir292820

Catégories
Non classé

Enabling preprint discovery, evaluation, and analysis with Europe PMC

Authors : Mariia Levchenko, Michael Parkin, Johanna McEntyre, Melissa Harrison

Preprints provide an indispensable tool for rapid and open communication of early research findings. Preprints can also be revised and improved based on scientific commentary uncoupled from journal-organised peer review. The uptake of preprints in the life sciences has increased significantly in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when immediate access to research findings became crucial to address the global health emergency.

With ongoing expansion of new preprint servers, improving discoverability of preprints is a necessary step to facilitate wider sharing of the science reported in preprints. To address the challenges of preprint visibility and reuse, Europe PMC, an open database of life science literature, began indexing preprint abstracts and metadata from several platforms in July 2018. Since then, Europe PMC has continued to increase coverage through addition of new servers, and expanded its preprint initiative to include the full text of preprints related to COVID-19 in July 2020 and then the full text of preprints supported by the Europe PMC funder consortium in April 2022.

The preprint collection can be searched via the website and programmatically, with abstracts and the open access full text of COVID-19 and Europe PMC funder preprint subsets available for bulk download in a standard machine-readable JATS XML format. This enables automated information extraction for large-scale analyses of the preprint corpus, accelerating scientific research of the preprint literature itself.

This publication describes steps taken to build trust, improve discoverability, and support reuse of life science preprints in Europe PMC. Here we discuss the benefits of indexing preprints alongside peer-reviewed publications, and challenges associated with this process.

URL : Enabling preprint discovery, evaluation, and analysis with Europe PMC

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.19.590240

Catégories
EN

Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and Open Science in Psychology: An Overview for Researchers

Author : Laura Bowering Mullen

Scholarly communication, Open Access (OA), and open science practices in Psychology are rapidly evolving. However, most published works that focus on scholarly communication issues do not target the specific discipline, and instead take a more “one size fits all” approach. When it comes to scholarly communication, research practices and traditions vary greatly across and within disciplines.

This monograph presents a current overview that aims to cover Open Access (OA) and some of the newer open science-related issues that are affecting Psychology. Issues covered include topics around OA of all types, as well as other important scholarly communication-related issues such as the emergence of preprint options, the evolution of new peer review models, citation metrics, persistent identifiers, coauthorship conventions, field-specific OA megajournals, and other “gold” OA psychology journal options, the challenges of interdisciplinarity, and how authors are availing themselves of green and gold OA strategies or using scholarly networking sites such as ResearchGate. Included are discussions of open science strategies in Psychology such as reproducibility, replication, and research data management.

This overview will allow psychology researchers to get up to speed on these expansive topics. Further study into researcher behavior in terms of scholarly communication in Psychology would create more understanding of existing culture as well as provide researchers with a more effective roadmap to the current landscape. As no other single work is known to provide a current look at scholarly communication topics that is specifically focused on Psychology, this targeted overview aims to partially fill that niche.

URL : Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and Open Science in Psychology: An Overview for Researchers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440231205390