Category Archives: oa.ingelfinger

Should AJE allow submissions of manuscripts that have been previously posted on preprint servers and received media attention? | American Journal of Epidemiology | Oxford Academic

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Abstract:  In weighing the question of whether AJE should accept preprints that have received press coverage, we need to keep in mind three sets of interests: the public interest, the publisher’s interest, and the author’s interest. During public health emergencies, such as a pandemic, the author’s interests (rapid communication of scientific findings to the public) are aligned with the public interest (learning about life-saving information as early as possible). However, the interests of different parties are not always aligned. In most cases, preprinted articles do not concern matters of life or death. Widespread dissemination of studies via preprint services conflicts with the journal editor’s interest in delivering fresh, original content. Dissemination of study results prior to peer review can occasionally backfire and cause unintended harm if the findings turn out to be false.

 

Characterization and Reach of Orthopaedic Research Posted to Preprint Servers: Are We “Undercooking” Our Science?

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Abstract:  Background 

Although biomedical preprint servers have grown rapidly over the past several years, the harm to patient health and safety remains a major concern among several scientific communities. Despite previous studies examining the role of preprints during the Coronavirus-19 pandemic, there is limited information characterizing their impact on scientific communication in orthopaedic surgery.

Questions/purposes 

(1) What are the characteristics (subspecialty, study design, geographic origin, and proportion of publications) of orthopaedic articles on three preprint servers? (2) What are the citation counts, abstract views, tweets, and Altmetric score per preprinted article and per corresponding publication?

Methods 

Three of the largest preprint servers (medRxiv, bioRxiv, and Research Square) with a focus on biomedical topics were queried for all preprinted articles published between July 26, 2014, and September 1, 2021, using the following search terms: “orthopaedic,” “orthopedic,” “bone,” “cartilage,” “ligament,” “tendon,” “fracture,” “dislocation,” “hand,” “wrist,” “elbow,” “shoulder,” “spine,” “spinal,” “hip,” “knee,” “ankle,” and “foot.” Full-text articles in English related to orthopaedic surgery were included, while nonclinical studies, animal studies, duplicate studies, editorials, abstracts from conferences, and commentaries were excluded. A total of 1471 unique preprints were included and further characterized in terms of the orthopaedic subspecialty, study design, date posted, and geographic factors. Citation counts, abstract views, tweets, and Altmetric scores were collected for each preprinted article and the corresponding publication of that preprint in an accepting journal. We ascertained whether a preprinted article was published by searching title keywords and the corresponding author in three peer-reviewed article databases (PubMed, Google Scholar, and Dimensions) and confirming that the study design and research question matched.

Results 

The number of orthopaedic preprints increased from four in 2017 to 838 in 2020. The most common orthopaedic subspecialties represented were spine, knee, and hip. From 2017 to 2020, the cumulative counts of preprinted article citations, abstract views, and Altmetric scores increased. A corresponding publication was identified in 52% (762 of 1471) of preprints. As would be expected, because preprinting is a form of redundant publication, published articles that are also preprinted saw greater abstract views, citations, and Altmetric scores on a per-article basis.

Conclusion 

Although preprints remain an extremely small proportion of all orthopaedic research, our findings suggest that nonpeer-reviewed, preprinted orthopaedic articles are being increasingly disseminated. These preprinted articles have a smaller academic and public footprint than their published counterparts, but they still reach a substantial audience through infrequent and superficial online interactions, which are far from equivalent to the engagement facilitated by peer review. Furthermore, the sequence of preprint posting and journal submission, acceptance, and publication is unclear based on the information available on these preprint servers. Thus, it is difficult to determine whether the metrics of preprinted articles are attributable to preprinting, and studies such as the present analysis will tend to overestimate the apparent impact of preprinting. Despite the potential for preprint servers to function as a venue for thoughtful feedback on research ideas, the available metrics data for these preprinted articles do not demonstrate the meaningful engagement that is achieved by peer review in terms of the frequency or depth of audience feedback.

Clinical Relevance 

Our findings highlight the need for safeguards to regulate research dissemination through preprint media, which has never been shown to benefit patients and should not be considered as evidence by clinicians. Clinician-scientists and researchers have the most important responsibility of protecting patients from the harm of potentially inaccurate biomedical science and therefore must prioritize patient needs first by uncovering scientific truths through the evidence-based processes of peer review, not preprinting. We recommend all journals publishing clinical research adopt the same policy as Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research®, The Bone & Joint Journal, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, and the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, removing any papers posted to preprint servers from consideration.

Journal attitudes and outcomes of preprints in dermatology – Jia – – British Journal of Dermatology – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  The use of preprints, manuscripts that can be uploaded to a public server and made almost immediately available for public dissemination without peer review, is becoming increasingly common.1 Preprint servers are not typically associated with established peer?reviewed journals and often operate independently. Proponents of preprints point toward improved rapid dissemination of results and opportunities for crowdsourced feedback before submission to peer?reviewed journals.1 Conversely, inconsistent upload criteria among preprint servers (such as lack of guidance for reporting conflict of interest or image manipulation),1 and the risk for widespread discourse of non?peer reviewed results by news media may impinge on research integrity.2 As members of the public may not understand the difference between preprints and traditionally peer?reviewed articles, preprints have the potential to cause widespread confusion and mistrust.2 Use of preprints may also make publication of results in traditional journals more difficult, as the results may be perceived to be less novel. Despite controversy, the number of preprints continue to rise.3 There is limited understanding of how dermatology journals view and consider preprints. In this study, we explore dermatology journal policies toward the submission of preprint articles for publication, and corresponding publication outcomes of dermatology articles previously uploaded to a large clinically oriented preprint server.

 

Journal attitudes and outcomes of preprints in dermatology – Jia – – British Journal of Dermatology – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  The use of preprints, manuscripts that can be uploaded to a public server and made almost immediately available for public dissemination without peer review, is becoming increasingly common.1 Preprint servers are not typically associated with established peer?reviewed journals and often operate independently. Proponents of preprints point toward improved rapid dissemination of results and opportunities for crowdsourced feedback before submission to peer?reviewed journals.1 Conversely, inconsistent upload criteria among preprint servers (such as lack of guidance for reporting conflict of interest or image manipulation),1 and the risk for widespread discourse of non?peer reviewed results by news media may impinge on research integrity.2 As members of the public may not understand the difference between preprints and traditionally peer?reviewed articles, preprints have the potential to cause widespread confusion and mistrust.2 Use of preprints may also make publication of results in traditional journals more difficult, as the results may be perceived to be less novel. Despite controversy, the number of preprints continue to rise.3 There is limited understanding of how dermatology journals view and consider preprints. In this study, we explore dermatology journal policies toward the submission of preprint articles for publication, and corresponding publication outcomes of dermatology articles previously uploaded to a large clinically oriented preprint server.

 

We need to talk about preprints: how (not) to deal with the media « KU Leuven blogt

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“Online preprint servers such as arXiv and bioRxiv allow researchers to share their findings with the scientific community before peer review. They are also a goldmine for journalists looking for their next big story. Here are some tips to navigate a potential media minefield….”

Editorial policies – Preprint Sharing | Springer

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“Springer journals encourage posting of preprints of primary research manuscripts on preprint servers, authors’ or institutional websites, and open communications between researchers whether on community preprint servers or preprint commenting platforms. Preprints are defined as an author’s version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal, which is deposited on a public server (as described in Preprints for the life sciences. Science 352, 899–901; 2016); preprints may be posted at any time during the peer review process. Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardize consideration at Springer journals. Manuscripts posted on preprint servers will not be taken into account when determining the advance provided by a study under consideration at a Springer journal.

Our policy on posting, licensing, citation of preprints and communications with the media about preprints of primary research manuscripts is summarized below….”

Update to the handling of “Preprints” by the Journal of Anesthesia | SpringerLink

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“Until now, “the Journal of Anesthesia” and its sister journal “JA Clinical Reports” followed a policy of immediately rejecting all submissions that had posted its preprint version on the web, considering them duplicate submissions. The basis for this strict stance was to raise the bar for quality submissions, as there were endless reports of falsification in research papers by anesthesiologists in Japan….

Springer, the publisher of the Journal of Anesthesia, goes so far as to recommend researchers post preprints [2]. Their stance is based on comments published in Science in 2016, expressing that researchers should post a preprint to one of the applicable servers while simultaneously submitting the manuscript to a journal to undergo peer-review [3]. If the authors have posted a preprint, Springer instructs them to disclose details of the preprint, including the DOI and licensing terms, when submitting their manuscript for publication. If the manuscript is subsequently published, the authors should update the preprint record with reference to the publication….

 

 

Consequently, beginning in 2021, “the Journal of Anesthesia” and its sister journal “JA Clinical Reports” will start accepting manuscripts that have posted their preprints on the web. Authors will also be able to resubmit manuscripts that the Journal of Anesthesia and JA Clinical Reports previously rejected because of their preprint version on the server. Please note that manuscripts must include information about existing preprints and that preprints cannot be cited in the manuscript, as they are presumed to have identical content.”

 

Will COVID-19 mark the end of scientific publishing as we know it?

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“Under the pressure of a global health crisis, the argument for open access has sunk in. Following calls from the World Health Organization and government leaders, over 150 publishers, companies, and research institutions have agreed to temporarily make all content related to COVID-19 free to read, ensuring efforts to understand the virus can go forth undeterred….

Is this the catalyst that breaks up the bonds of an old publishing model once and for all? …”

Assessment of Preprint Policies of Top-Ranked Clinical Journals | Medical Journals and Publishing

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Abstract:  Introduction

The clinical research community has adopted the use of preprint servers, which provide outlets for preliminary reports of research that has not been peer-reviewed.1 Preprint servers support open scholarship, allow research to be disseminated quickly, offer opportunities for peer feedback before formal submission to a journal, and have been increasingly adopted by the biological, physical, and economic scientific communities.2-4 However, for preprint potential to be realized in clinical research, peer-reviewed journals must be willing to consider manuscripts that were previously posted on preprint servers (preprints) for publication. Because systematic information about contemporary clinical journal policies on preprints is lacking,5 our objective was to assess the preprint publication policies of the 100 clinical journals with the highest impact factors.

 

Methods

This cross-sectional study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline. For this study, we used InCites Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to identify journals across all fields with a 2018 journal impact factor greater than 5. We manually screened all identified journals by title and categories on JCR to find the 100 top-ranked clinical journals and included only those that publish original research.

For each qualifying journal, we checked a succession of resources to ascertain its editorial policy on preprints: the journal website; the publisher website; the Transpose Database6; and the first 10 pages of a Google search containing the journal name and the term preprint. Once a preprint policy was located, we classified each journal’s policy by the following categories: preprints allowed (if preprints will be considered for publication), case-by-case determination (if preprints are evaluated on an individual basis), and preprints prohibited (if preprints will not be considered for publication). Data were collected on April 23, 2020. We conducted descriptive analyses using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation).

Results

Among the 100 top-ranked clinical journals, the median (interquartile range) impact factor was 13.7 (10.7-19.0). Most journals (86 [86%]) allowed preprints (Table 1). In contrast, 13 journals (13%) evaluated each preprint independently to determine whether to reject it on the basis of its prior preprint status (case-by-case determination). Only 1 journal (1%) had a policy that prohibited preprints (preprints prohibited). There was no association between the median impact factor and the category of preprint policy (Table 2).

10 tips for submitting a successful preprint | Nature Index

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“The COVID-19 pandemic has not only accelerated the already rapid growth in submissions of preprints in the biological sciences, but has brought them to the public’s attention as never before.

For example, the medical sciences preprint server medRxiv has already posted more than 3,200 preprints related to the disease. In April, it recorded 10 million views from scientists and the general public.

Many authors in the biological and medical sciences are new to the format. Nature Index asked five experts for their advice on preprint etiquette and best practice….”

Coronavirus Research Moves Faster than Medical Journals

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“Many of the coronavirus-related papers being posted on MedRxiv are rushed and flawed, and some are terrible. But a lot report serious research findings, some of which will eventually find their way into prestigious journals, which have been softening their stance on previously released research. (“We encourage posting to preprint servers as a way to share information immediately,” emails Jennifer Zeis, director of communications at the New England Journal of Medicine.) In the meantime, the research is out there, being commented on and followed up on by other scientists, and reported on in the news media. The journals, which normally keep their content behind steep paywalls, are also offering coronavirus articles outside of it. New efforts to sort through the resulting bounty of available research are emerging, from a group of Johns Hopkins University scholars sifting manually through new Covid-19 papers to a 59,000-article machine-readable data set, requested by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and enabled by an assortment of tech corporations and academic and philanthropic organizations, that is meant to be mined for insights using artificial intelligence and other such means.

This is the future for scientific communication that has been predicted since the spread of the internet began to enable it in the early 1990s (and to some extent long before then), yet proved slow and fitful in its arrival. It involves more or less open access to scientific research and data, and a more-open review process with a much wider range of potential peers than the peer review offered by journals. For its most enthusiastic boosters, it is also an opportunity to break through disciplinary barriers, broaden and improve the standards for research success and generally just make science work better. To skeptics, it means abandoning high standards and a viable economic model for research publishing in favor of a chaotic, uncertain new approach.

I’m mostly on the side of the boosters here, but have learned during five years of writing on and off about academic publishing that the existing way of doing things is quite well entrenched, and that would-be innovators often misunderstand the challenges involved in displacing or replacing it….”

Covid-19 is reshaping the world of bioscience publishing – STAT

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“One important innovation in bioscience publishing is the rise of preprint servers, sites that put manuscripts online without peer review. Long an accepted practice in physics and math through the arXiv (pronounced Archive) web server, this approach to disseminating research has come to the biomedical sciences through bioRxiv and medRxiv….

bioRxiv was launched and run out of Cold Spring Harbor Labs in 2013, and is supported by a number of non-profit entities. Submissions to it, and the more recently launched medRxiv, are growing exponentially, now exceeding 80,000.

Most conventional biomedical publishers initially viewed preprints as “prior publication” that would preclude subsequent acceptance by peer reviewed journals. This objection has fallen by the wayside in response to widespread support for the value that preprints confer. Preprints unquestionably enable rapid communication of results, in contrast to conventional pre-publication peer review, which delays the time from submission to publication for months — and sometimes for years.

It is now clear that many preprints generate rapid, extensive, and effective reviews after they are posted through readers’ comments on the site, as well as on social media platforms such as Twitter. Fears that preprints would promote many erroneous claims because they lack pre-publication peer review have not proven correct, though much more research on this topic is needed….

bioRxiv published its first preprint on the novel coronavirus on January 19, 2020, and it has been on a roll ever since, with 33 papers in January, 281 in February, and more than 500 in total as I write this. bioRxiv is currently receiving 25 to 30 scientific papers day on this topic, with the majority now going to medRxiv, the more clinically oriented site.

In a recent discussion I had with Richard Sever, cofounder of both bioRxiv and medRxiv, he told me that about 40% of Covid-19 papers are from China, but that fraction is changing as the infection extends across the world. Given the intense international interest in these papers, the editors established a modified procedure whereby all coronavirus and Covid-19 papers are examined by a group of domain experts — not to provide reviews but to assess whether the work is serious, screening out the very few that might raise questions or be dangerous if they were false. The group asks authors of the rare screened-out manuscripts to submit them elsewhere for peer review….”

Sharing research data and findings relevant to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak | Wellcome

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“We call on researchers, journals and funders to ensure that research findings and data relevant to this outbreak are shared rapidly and openly to inform the public health response and help save lives.

We affirm the commitment to the principles set out in the 2016 Statement on data sharing in public health emergencies, and will seek to ensure that the World Health Organization (WHO) has rapid access to emerging findings that could aid the global response….

Specifically, we commit to work together to help ensure:

all peer-reviewed research publications relevant to the outbreak are made immediately open access, or freely available at least for the duration of the outbreak
research findings relevant to the outbreak are shared immediately with the WHO upon journal submission, by the journal and with author knowledge
research findings are made available via preprint servers before journal publication, or via platforms that make papers openly accessible before peer review, with clear statements regarding the availability of underlying data
researchers share interim and final research data relating to the outbreak, together with protocols and standards used to collect the data, as rapidly and widely as possible – including with public health and research communities and the WHO
authors are clear that data or preprints shared ahead of submission will not pre-empt its publication in these journals….”

Preprints and Scholarly Communication: An… | F1000Research

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Abstract:  Background: Since 2013, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of preprint servers. Little is known about the position of researchers, funders, research performing organisations and other stakeholders with respect to this fast-paced landscape. In this article, we explore the perceived benefits and challenges of preprint posting, alongside issues including infrastructure and financial sustainability. We also discuss the definition of a ‘preprint’ in different communities, and the impact this has on uptake.

Methods: This study is based on 38 semi-structured interviews of key stakeholders, based on a purposive heterogeneous sampling approach and undertaken between October 2018 and January 2019. Interviewees were primarily drawn from biology, chemistry and psychology, where use of preprints is growing. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis to identify trends. Interview questions were designed based on Innovation Diffusion Theory, which was also used to interpret our results.

Results: Participants were conscious of the rising prominence of preprints and cited early and fast dissemination as their most appealing feature. Preprints were also considered to enable broader access to scientific literature and increased opportunities for informal commenting. The main concerns related to the lack of quality assurance and the ‘Ingelfinger rule’. We identified trust as an essential factor in preprint posting, and highlight the enabling role of Twitter in showcasing preprints.

Conclusions: The preprints landscape is evolving fast, and disciplinary communities are at different stages in the innovation diffusion process. The landscape is characterised by experimentation, which leads to the conclusion that a one-size-fits-all approach to preprints is not feasible. Cooperation and active engagement between the stakeholders involved will play an important role going forward. We share questions for the further development of the preprints landscape, with the most important being whether preprint posting will develop as a publisher- or researcher-centric practice.