Andreas Heyland, Professor, University of Guelph.
Preprint research literature has become more widespread in the life sciences in recent years, with publishers encouraging (or even requiring) manuscript submissions to preprint servers as part of their review process. Uploading non peer-reviewed manuscripts can accelerate the immediate and unrestricted distribution and access of research results to the scientific community and the public. It can also introduce a higher level of transparency in terms of scientific progress that is based on, in some cases, publicly funded research. What it cannot do however, is replace the peer review, which is the necessary and critical quality control step in scientific publishing. In comparison to other infectious disease outbreaks the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedent number of preprints (Else, 2020). While the value of preprints has been recognized by the scientific community, public health agencies and the public in terms of its ability to distribute research findings in a timely and expedited manner, it also revealed important limitations. For example, incorrect claims related to the causative pathogen and its evolutionary origin, originating from preprints spread rapidly through the public before they had to be revised or retracted (Brierley, 2021). While some preprint servers attempted to address this problem by adding disclaimers, emphasizing the lack of peer review to preprint publications, the impact of such actions are likely insufficient. Public understanding of the peer review and its importance for scientific integrity is limited and once specific claims have been made in the public domain, they cannot simply be removed. The consequences of this can be devastating for public health and safety but also scientific progress (Mousavi and Abdollahi, 2020). One key issue driving the use of preprints is the notoriously slow turn around of manuscripts through the peer review process. While careful and rigorous assessment of scientific manuscripts by several peer reviewers takes time, more significant delays in the peer review process originate from difficulties finding appropriate and competent reviewers that are willing to complete their assessment in a timely manner. Furthermore, editorial delays, an inconsistent, non standardized review structure between journals and the fact that most scientific journals are run as for-profit operations, which do not reimburse reviewers for their efforts reduce the effectiveness and quality of the journal dependent peer review process. The journal impact factors (JIFs) amplify the problem, by creating an artificial quality standard, which is detached from the quality of the actual research manuscripts. To be clear, there are quality differences between scientific journals, but they cannot be measured by the rejection rates and other arbitrary metrics journals have been associating with their publication. The issue of JIFs has been recognized by several funding organizations with the result that JIFs are now removed as a quality criterium in the grant review process in several countries and international organizations (Triggle et al., 2022). Considering the complexity of academic publishing and the need for the timely and open access release of vital research results that are certified by the scientific community, the solution lies in decoupling the release of scientific data and the peer review process from scientific journals. Over the last two decades, scientific journals and articles have grown exponentially (Bornmann and Mutz, 2015) and while this diversification has resulted in more specialized topics, it certainly has not enhanced the overall quality of the process, with numerous predatory journals surfacing (Bartholomew, 2014). The peer review process has been fundamentally compromised for many newer open access journals and the open access option itself has been exploited by many outlets as a mechanism to enhance profits (Budzinski et al., 2020). In order to avoid bottle necks in scientific publishing and fundamentally address “infodemics”, we do not need more preprint servers, we need to return the peer review process to the scientific community, via journal independent peer review and public commenting on scientifically certified work.
Bartholomew, R.E., 2014. Science for sale: the rise of predatory journals. J R Soc Med 107, 384-385.
Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., 2015. Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references. Journal of the Association of Information Science and Technology.
Brierley, L., 2021. Lessons from the influx of preprints during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Lancet Planet Health.
Budzinski, O., Grebel, T., Wolling, J., Zhang, X., 2020. Drivers of article processing charges in open access. Scientometrics 124, 2185-2206.
Else, H., 2020. How a torrent of COVID science changed research publishing — in seven charts. Nature.
Mousavi, T., Abdollahi, M., 2020. A review of the current concerns about misconduct in medical sciences publications and the consequences. 359-369.
Triggle, C.R., MacDonald, R., Triggle, D.J., Grierson, D., 2022. Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges. Account Res 29, 133-164.
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I, like many are frustrated with the current journal/peer review vicious circle, and some new format is is needed, or at least a massive overhaul of journal approach. Wth the preprint scheme, how can the community encourage people to cite the work? Is a preprint DOI enough for someone to switch from citing what they think are good papers on good journal?