Preprints for the life sciences

Abstract

A preprint is a complete scientific manuscript (often one also being submitted to a peer-reviewed journal) that is uploaded by the authors to a public server without formal review. After a brief inspection to ensure that the work is scientific in nature, the posted scientific manuscript can be viewed without charge on the Web. Thus, preprint servers facilitate the direct and open delivery of new knowledge and concepts to the worldwide scientific community before traditional validation through peer review ([ 1 ][1], [ 2 ][2]). Although the preprint server arXiv.org has been essential for physics, mathematics, and computer sciences for over two decades, preprints are currently used minimally in biology. The ASAPbio meeting (Accelerating Science and Publication in biology) was held on 16 and 17 February 2016 to explore the wider use of preprints for disseminating ideas and results in the life sciences. The ~70 invited participants included junior and senior working scientists; and representatives of public and private funding agencies, industry, databases, and scientific journals. All talks and breakout sessions were streamed over the Internet to encourage community participation, and a full record of the meeting is available ([ 3 ][3]). The meeting goals were to analyze the roles that preprints might play in communicating results in biology and to debate the potential advantages and disadvantages of greater use of preprints for the progress of science, career development, and the integrity of the scientific record. In the three sections below, three classes of attendees—academic scientists, funders, and publishers—provide their perspectives on the meeting and its outcomes. ### Online Survey Tell Science what you think about preprint servers at J. M. Berg, N. Bhalla, M. Chalfie, J. S. Fraser, C. W. Greider, M. Hendricks, M. W. Kirschner, R. Lehmann, P. Turner, C. Wolberger Motivated by frustrations in the slow speed of publishing ([ 1 ][1]), we and other junior and senior life scientists participated in the ASAPbio meeting. Physicists have embraced sharing their work as preprints for 25 years. Paul Ginsparg, founder of arXiv, described how physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists check arXiv when they wake up each morning to learn about advances in their fields. Even though physicists publish their work later in journals, arXiv has become THE way to communicate new discoveries. Ginsparg also described how preprints empower younger scientists to move their work and careers forward. Knowledge and opinions of preprints varied among the ASAPbio attendees at the start of the meeting, but many came to appreciate their benefits. Currently, the time between manuscript submission and paper publication is unpredictable and can be long. Depositing a manuscript in a preprint archive makes the work publicly available almost immediately. Posting preprints has the added benefit of democratizing the flow of information and making it available to all investigators across the globe, while allowing journals to make their own judgments of appropriateness and interest after peer review. Publicly available preprints provide an opportunity for authors to obtain feedback beyond the few scientists who see the manuscript during peer review. Finally, preprint archives also document the history of the ideas, as old versions of a manuscript are maintained even after revisions of the work are submitted. Ginsparg was emphatic that a preprint, because it has a time stamp and is publicly available, plays a key role in establishing priority of discovery. But will this model be widely accepted by biologists? Some suggested that the archive could be flooded with weak papers meant only to assert priority. But decades of experience have demonstrated that scientists do not post poor-quality work on arXiv because of the impact on their reputations; we expect professional biologists to behave similarly. After hearing various points of view, ASAPbio attendees, in a private and optional poll, voted nearly unanimously in favor of preprints being used for establishing priority ([ 4 ][4]). ![Figure][5] Peer review and preprints. Preprints accelerate dissemination, whereas manuscripts are being improved through peer review. ILLUSTRATION: N. CARY/ SCIENCE If preprints are to help early-career scientists, their use in hiring and promotion is of paramount importance. The ability to cite preprints in grant applications and progress reports would benefit scientists at all career stages. Although not peer-reviewed, a preprint provides tangible evidence of a scientist's most recent work, which is often of greatest interest to review panels. Again, by private ballot, nearly all of voting attendees thought that preprints should be considered as evidence of achievement in evaluations for academic advancement and for funding ([ 4 ][4]). We also debated the use of preprints in reporting results of clinical studies. In its favor, some argued that clinical research would benefit from more open and timely access to data and noted that papers published in respected medical journals can also be misleading or wrong. Some who were opposed questioned whether research involving human subjects might require additional safeguards in scrutiny by institutional review boards and disclosures of conflicts of interest. As occurred in the physical sciences, different fields in biology and biomedical research may come to embrace preprint archiving at different times and to different degrees. What would help promote the use of preprints by life scientists? Several steps are essential: broader acceptance of preprint posting by journals (in process and well on its way); the development of search engines for finding and linking preprints to published versions of manuscripts; and the recognition of preprints by grant, hiring, and promotion committees. These steps will likely come. But, motivated by the meeting, many ASAPbio attendees (P. E....