Photo by Sever.
Quality is of utmost importance in the world of scholarly publishing, but speed can also be crucial. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, researchers had to share updates quickly with other scientists. One solution is to distribute preprints of studies that have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a traditional academic journal. Richard Sever, Associate Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York and Executive Editor of Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives, recently visited Duke to discuss his work as co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv, two of a number of servers that post preprints. of scientific papers.
In traditional publishing, Sever says, “When you submit a paper to a good journal … most of the time it gets rejected right away.” Of the papers considered by the journal, about half will ultimately be rejected by the editors. Even for successful papers, the entire process can take months or years and often ends with the paper being placed behind a paywall.
Posting preprints on servers like bioRxiv, according to Sever, does not preclude studies from eventually being published in journals. It just “means the information is public much faster.”
In 2013, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory released bioRxiv. Since then, there has been a “proliferation of discipline-specific servers” such as chemRxiv, socarXiv, NutriXiv and SportRxiv.
How do these preprint servers work? Scientists submit a study to an Rxiv server, and then after a short review process, the paper becomes visible to everyone within a few hours a day. A frequent concern about these servers is that they can be used to distribute poor quality science or false information. As the priority is rapid exchange of information, review staff and volunteers cannot conduct extensive peer review of each submission. Instead, the review process focuses on a few key criteria. Is the information plagiarized? Is it real research? Is it science or not science? And most importantly, can it be dangerous?
In 2019, Sever and his colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor partnered with Yale and the BMJ Group to launch medRxiv, a server that focuses on health research. Since the consequences of posting misleading clinical information can be more severe, it uses enhanced screening for submitted papers.
Papers can also be reviewed after they are uploaded to a server such as bioRxiv. A scientific journal, on the other hand, may occasionally publish a correction to a published article, but not an entirely new version.
What are the benefits of preprint servers? Releasing preprints allows scientists to communicate study results more quickly. It can also increase visibility, especially for early-career scientists who do not have extensive publication records. Grants or hiring committees may look at preprints months before a paper is published in a journal. This emphasis on speed also accelerates communication and discovery, and the absence of paywalls can make science more accessible. In addition, preprint servers can give researchers an opportunity to receive more extensive feedback on their work before submitting to journals.
So why submit to scientific journals? Traditional publishing is slower, but aims to assess the scientific rigor and quality and, critically, the importance of the work. “The lifeblood of academic careers,” says Sever, “is journal articles.” Another attendee of Sever’s lecture mentioned the value of curation, using the example of movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Sever believes that the type of curation carried out by journals is different. Film reviewers give their opinions later in the process; they don’t stop making a movie halfway through saying “I want a happy ending”. Sever believes preprint servers allow science to be shared more widely without putting the final decision in the hands of editors.
What are the concerns about preprint servers? One concern scientists may have is being “claimed,” or sharing information only to have another researcher claim it as their own. Sever does not find the research argument very compelling. “How can you be scooped if you’re using an anti-scooping device?” He believes that the Rxiv servers, since they allow rapid distribution of results, actually provide a safeguard against people passing off ideas like their own, because the preprint author is in control of the timing. Another concern occasionally expressed is that having a paper on an Rxiv server can make it more difficult for a journal to accept it. Sever is not convinced, pointing out that most papers are rejected by journals anyway.
A more pressing concern may be the potential for preprint servers to spread bad science, though Sever notes that there are “a lot of not-so-good papers in traditional publishing.” In addition, academics’ careers depend on producing high-quality work, which should be an incentive not to share bad work, whether on preprint servers or in scholarly journals.
However, people sometimes submit pseudoscience to the preprint servers. “We’ve been sent HIV denialism, we’ve been sent anti-vaxx stuff,” says Sever. Some people, unfortunately, are motivated to share false information masquerading as legitimate science. That’s why bioRxiv checks submissions—less for accuracy and more for outright misinformation.
A more recent concern is the potential for AI-generated “letters.” But like journal articles, all papers posted to bioRxiv are kept there forever, so even a bogus paper that gets past the review process can be caught later. Anyone who does so risks future exposure. A more insidious form of this problem, Sever says, is “citation spam,” where someone generates papers under someone else’s name but cites himself in the references to improve his citation record.
“Like anything,” Sever says, “we’re going to have to accept that there’s some trash out there, there’s some noise.” The ship, he says, is no guarantee of accuracy, and “at some point you have to trust people.”
Sever believes preprint servers play an important role by “decoupling distribution from certification.” He hopes they can open the door to “stimulating the evolution of publishing.”
Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025