Most Preprint Servers Allow the Publication of Opinion Papers
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Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
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Serhii Nazarovets
Abstract
Preprints are not only a raw form of research presentation, but also increasingly used as a gateway of entry into peer-reviewed journals. Several preprint servers are in existence, and some serve specific thematic groups or specialties, while others have a broader thematic scope. In this letter, we examined 36 preprint servers in March of 2023, noting that the majority (27/36 or 75%) accept opinion papers, two have an unclear, unstated, or unknown set of policies, while seven, including some of the most popular (biorXiv, medRxiv, Research Square), do not explicitly accommodate opinion papers. We opine that it would be in the interests of those preprint servers that do not publish opinion papers or evidence-based opinion papers to modify their scope of manuscript types in order to expand their user base and attract more participating scientists, but also to provide a more holistic set of scientific publishing objectives that accommodates a wider and more inclusive range of views.
Dear Open Information Science Editors,
An open and liberal debate between and among academics can only take place when there exists a platform for the expression of ideas in the form of opinions, but these might be limited or suppressed, especially if they are controversial.[1] It has been argued that, especially in the COVID-19 era, journals need to allow authors to publish letters to the editor (LTEs) and opinion papers alongside research papers to express their concerns and/or disagreements with findings (Teixeira da Silva, 2021). Such LTEs allow a liberal ethical debate to develop around a specified topic (Daly, 2023). Authors can thus express their ideas via LTEs, and editors can express theirs via editorials. Despite this, not all journals have the option of “opinion” or “evidence-based opinion” papers as a manuscript category type for submission, even though their editors might have the option of “editorials.” We believe that such an alternative form of publication as a preprint allows scientists to join the discussion in much the same way as other alternative channels in the system of scientific communication, such as blogs or social networks (Collins, Shiffman, & Rock, 2016; Sugimoto, Work, Larivière, & Haustein, 2017).
There are a number of preprint servers that accommodate a wide range of academic and scientific work and disciplines, and we provide the 36 most popular active international preprint servers based on the ASAPbio list of preprint servers in Table 1. Some preprint servers offer a thematically narrow scope to accommodate preprints from a specific field of study, such as bioRxiv for biology, medRxiv for medicine, Advance for social science or humanities, while others such as Preprints or Research Square are multidisciplinary. We were interested in understanding which preprint servers allow for the publication of data-free opinion papers or data-containing evidence-based opinion papers, and which had specific statements in their submission guidelines that explicitly allowed or disallowed the submission of such papers. Our analysis (initially on December 10, 2022, with a verification on March 10, 2023) shows that 27 preprint servers (or 75%) accept opinion papers, 7 do not accept this category while 2 (6%) do not have a content policy. Thus, despite the fact that the democracy of the publication process is referred to as one of the main advantages of using preprint servers (Smart, 2022), 19% of the preprint servers we analyzed do not accept this type of paper, which are important for open research communication (Supplementary file).
Inclusive/exclusive policies of different preprint servers regarding opinion papers1
1 See Supplementary file for more details; only preprint servers that assign a digital object identifier to preprints are included; we recognize that there are dozens of preprint servers (https://doapr.coar-repositories.org/functions/metrics/), so only a few selected are represented, based on the ASAPbio list of preprint servers (https://asapbio.org/preprint-servers); we decided to exclude repositories of funding organizations, open access publishing platforms, and national projects, because content policy of their preprint servers may have their own specificity for “objective reasons.” 2Many policies do not contain a separate mention of opinion papers, but simply indicate that they accept all types of documents. In this case, we considered these as “Accept.” 3General Policy of OSF Preprints (https://osf.io/preprints/). OSF Community Preprint Servers are covered separately.
Preprints are becoming an increasingly used form of publication, but their effective integration as a precursor of peer-reviewed journals is still hampered by inconsistent submission and ethical policies, since different preprint servers have different policies while different journals and publishers have their own policies toward the acceptance, or not, or preprints (Malički et al., 2020). In order to iron out policy-related inconsistencies, greater ethical rigor must be adopted for preprints as equally it is adopted for peer-reviewed journals (Teixeira da Silva, 2022).
We believe that preprints could be further popularized if moderated opinion papers are allowed to be published, thereby also attracting a greater participation by a wider group of academics.
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Funding information: The authors state no funding involved.
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Author contributions: The authors contributed equally to the intellectual discussion underlying this paper, literature exploration, writing, reviews and editing, and accept responsibility for the content and interpretation.
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Conflict of interest: The authors state no conflict of interest.
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Originality statement: This manuscript is the authors’ original work and has not been published nor has it been submitted simultaneously elsewhere. Both authors have checked the manuscript and agreed to its submission.
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Data availability statement: All data may be found in the online Supplementary file.
References
Collins, K., Shiffman, D., & Rock, J. (2016). How are scientists using social media in the workplace? PLOS ONE, 11(10), e0162680. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162680.Suche in Google Scholar
Daly, T. (2023). The letter as a forum to embed ethics into the scientific literature. Accountability in Research (in press). doi: 10.1080/08989621.2023.2171791.Suche in Google Scholar
Malički, M., Jerončić, A., Ter Riet, G., Bouter, L. M., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Goodman, S. N., & Aalbersberg, I. J. (2020). Preprint servers’ policies, submission requirements, and transparency in reporting and research integrity recommendations. JAMA, 324(18), 1901–1903. doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.17195.Suche in Google Scholar
Smart, P. (2022). The evolution, benefits, and challenges of preprints and their interaction with journals. Science Editing, 9(1), 79–84. doi: 10.6087/kcse.269.Suche in Google Scholar
Sugimoto, C. R., Work, S., Larivière, V., & Haustein, S. (2017). Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(9), 2037–2062. doi: 10.1002/asi.23833.Suche in Google Scholar
Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2021). The importance for journals to publish commentaries and letters to the editor in the age of COVID-19. International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health, 8(7), 3725–3727. doi: 10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20212637.Suche in Google Scholar
Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2022). Should preprints and peer-reviewed papers be assigned equal status? Journal of Visceral Surgery, 159(5), 444–445. doi: 10.1016/j.jviscsurg.2022.08.002.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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