Preprints: a seductive allure – why are they good and why should you be careful with them?

• Preprint papers are research manuscripts shared publicly before undergoing peer review, allowing for rapid dissemination of findings.
• Preprints are useful for fostering collaboration, timely discussions, and transparency, but they can be misleading if interpreted as fully validated research. Their impact depends on critical evaluation by readers, emphasizing the importance of context and expertise when using preprints.

 

Preprint works were particularly visible during the pandemic. Some of them were eventually published, and some were not. Before, there were preprint servers like medRxiv and BioRxiv, then ChemRxiv, Nature Precedings, arXiv, but the influence of these preprint repositories especially strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here I want to say a few words about why it is good and why it is not good.

Before formal publication in a scientific journal, scientific and medical articles are traditionally verified by a “review”, that is, they have a “peer-review”. In this process, journal editors take the advice of various experts—called “referees”—who have evaluated the paper and can identify weaknesses in its assumptions, methods, and conclusions.

This is done by experts from the narrow scientific field from which the work comes. A journal will usually publish an article only after the editors are satisfied that the authors have addressed the reviewers’ concerns and that the data presented support the conclusions drawn in the paper. The reviewers will also warn if there is something suspicious in their work, for example falsification of images, falsification of data and the like. Of course, you should not count on reviewers to always notice it, sometimes the work is published, and only then do other experts notice that something is wrong.

However, this strict procedure takes a long time. Often for months. For example, if your work is published half a year after you submitted it, that’s even a good time. Look at the data in randomly selected scientific papers – it usually says when the paper was submitted and when it was published, and that period can be as long as 8-9 months.

In general, reviews are tiring for authors: they have already spent a lot of their energy and resources to write the paper, probably also to translate it, because the papers are published mostly in English and then they still have to comply with all the “ringings” of the reviewers. And there is also the proofreading and proofreading of the work for the magazine, in which the structure of the text is sometimes significantly changed, so that linguistically it is more a reflection of that style in the language in which it is published. So, for the entire team that worked on that paper, the period from submission to publication is stressful.

Since this process can be time-consuming, authors use the preprint repository service to make their papers available as “preprints” before certification by peer review, which allows other scientists to see, discuss and comment on them immediately.

A significant portion of papers on the new virus SARS-CoV-2 and on drugs, vaccines and the impact of various measures on pandemic control were published as preprint papers. And the publication of such works has increased significantly during the pandemic.

Readers and – especially the media – should therefore be aware that the authors have not finalized articles on such repositories, and that they may contain errors and report information that has not yet been accepted or approved by the scientific or medical community in any way.

It has not happened once during the pandemic that the media made a sensational article about a finding from a preprint and that it ended up being fuel for some misinformation. Let’s say this is the case with the work that showed that under certain conditions parts of the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be incorporated into the human genome, although this virus is not a retrovirus, but only if it overexpresses the LINE-1 element in cell culture. Or a preprint on the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19.

And one more thing: research has shown that only some media emphasize that it is a preprint study. It is necessary to always emphasize this – that what we are talking about is a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed or officially published. Even if the work is written about by award-winning, high-profile science journalists who write for magazines like Nature and Science – this fact must always be emphasized.

Reprints should improve the final works in the sense that these drafts are more visible and more people from the field can give an expert opinion about them. These criticisms could lead to the final work being improved. One study, commented on by Science , which was done before the pandemic and published in 2020 in Research integrity and peer review under the title “Comparing quality of reporting between preprints and peer-reviewed articles in the biomedical literature ” showed that in fact preprints could lead to better communication of the scientific community and contributions in terms of improving the work. That contribution is not big now, but moderate, but it exists.

In fact, it turned out that peer-review itself sometimes does not contribute much to improving the work and that often drafts and final papers do not differ much in terms of providing more data, research details, used reagents, etc. This does not mean that the peer-review system is to be rejected, let’s face it. But, when more people can see the work on the server, who also use a comment section, like Disqus, there is more hope that bad science will be rejected quickly, and good science will be improved.

When it comes to very important matters, especially in crisis situations, the peer-review process is very slow. Using the institution of pre-prints, other experts in the field can quickly access the results of the work. And if they are really good – they will see that maybe something is “not right”. One good example of the importance of preprints was the topic of thrombosis after the adenoviral COVID-19 vaccine, when groups of German and Norwegian scientists very quickly shed some light on this problem.

If it had been done the classic way – without publication on the pre-print server, much later other experts would have come to similar results and these pre-prints have provided certain evidence to the regulatory agencies regarding these vaccines.

The conclusion of the work published in April 2021 in Plos Biology  under the title  “The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape“  is that preprints have made an immeasurable contribution in terms of research on this virus and the pandemic in during the crisis situation and that more and more attention is being paid to this form, and preprints are being reviewed more and more quickly, as well as that the pandemic has changed the way of scientific communication.

Preprint repositories/archives and the works posted on them are important for the scientific community, because they provide a more democratic approach to ideas and research. Their disadvantage is the possibility of misinterpretation, especially by laymen, but this can also happen with peer-reviewed works. The main thing would be for the media – editorial offices, journalists – to emphasize every time that it is a preprint and what it means.