The recent increase in the use of preprint servers is a strong indication that the community is viewing preprints positively. To be clear, I’m referring to the manuscripts posted on servers such as BioRxiv, that have not been peer reviewed. Granted, there are caveats related to the lack of rigorous peer review, but I think this is a game changer. Physics and Computer science are way ahead of biology on this front and have been the first adopters of using preprints to disseminate their research. The large number of preprint servers available is another indication of their growing popularity. Preprints provide the authors the ability to post their work for immediate use and lets them establish a foothold while waiting for peer review. It’s a great way to more rapidly advance science. There is only one major problem. You can’t find them using the traditional PubMed or Web of Science search engines. They don’t list them. You can find some of them on Google scholar, but the advanced search options aren’t that advanced (can’t use the “*” as a wild card, for example). To be fair, the NIH is piloting a project where they are including preprints from NIH funded projects, but currently this is a small fraction and in my search, not all NIH funded preprints could be found. So, while preprint servers provide the immediate posting of research output, it won’t be noticed unless someone searches all of the preprint servers individually. This is a problem.
Here is an example trying to find articles about adolescents and smoking as of today’s date (April 30, 2021) and restricting to articles published or deposited in 2021. Using the Advanced Search option in google scholar allintitle: adolescent smoking returned 14 results. In the Web of Science TI= (adolescent* AND smok*) , turned up 32 articles; In PubMed the search term (Adolescent*[Title] AND smok*[Title]) generated 50 articles. But all three missed the preprint posted on the preprint server SciELO titled “Subjective knowledge of school adolescents about the health effects of smoking and association with smoking status” posted on April 23, 2021, which has had 28 downloads. How are we to find these preprint articles without some sort of self promotion?
For the preprints that I can find on PubMed, there is a big banner that indicates this is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is okay, but all preprints have to be findable, otherwise we are holding back science.
Finally, there are two more reasons why preprints need to be included in science search engines. First, some authors may want to disseminate their research independent of publishing it in a journal, which is entirely within their right. Secondly, some research, such as negative results, will never make it into a journal. In both of these cases, this research output should be no less accessible to the science community than a published paper. IMHO it is not within the jurisdiction of PubMed or Web of Science to restrict access to what they consider “peer reviewed”.
[This article was originally published on SCAPUCH]