Biologists Are Posting Unreviewed Papers in Record Numbers. Here's A

FEATURES Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ THE PREPRINT DILEMMA on March 19, 2021 Biologists are posting unreviewed papers in record numbers. Here’s a survival guide By Jocelyn Kaiser ne day in May 2014, while visiting the manuscript appeared online for all and journal editors have invited him to his parents in Bulgaria, biologist the world to see. Within weeks, it had submit papers. Nikolai Slavov sat at his laptop drawn hundreds of downloads, two dozen Slavov represents the promise of a move- and called up a free online ar- tweets, and a trickle of online comments. ment that is sweeping across the life sci- chive of scientific papers called It also brought job offers. And in July 2015, ences. Although physicists have been bioRxiv. Then, with a click of an months before a final peer-reviewed ver- posting preprints for nearly 3 decades, “upload” button, he submitted sion of his paper appeared in the journal many biologists have only just begun to the draft of a paper he’d written Cell Reports, Slavov accepted a tenure- widely share their unreviewed papers. The about his postdoctoral work at track position at Northeastern University shift has been catalyzed, in part, by en- the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. dorsements of preprint publishing from Oin Cambridge on the unexpectedly diverse Posting that first-draft manuscript, or high-profile scientists, as well as the 2013 structure of ribosomes, the cell’s protein- preprint, “clearly expedited and helped launch of the nonprofit bioRxiv by Cold making factories. “I was mostly excited, with my job search,” Slavov says. And he Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New but a little bit nervous” about sharing find- thinks the half-dozen preprints he’s posted York; bioRxiv now holds more than 15,000 ings that hadn’t been scrutinized by peer since have helped turbocharge his career. papers. But in contrast to physics, where reviewers, he says. Science journalists have covered his work, preprints took off without much fanfare He didn’t worry for long. In a few hours, colleagues have proposed collaborations, or controversy, the leap into preprints ART BONAZZI/SALZMAN DAVIDE ILLUSTRATION: 1344 29 SEPTEMBER 2017 • VOL 357 ISSUE 6358 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Corrected 2 November 2017. See full text. Published by AAAS DA_0929NewsFeatures.indd 1344 9/27/17 10:15 AM Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ is stirring strong passions in the hyper- competitive world of the life sciences. Why are biology preprints taking off now? Proponents of biology preprints argue they will accelerate the pace of science— Today’s boom was long in the making. In the 1960s, the National on March 19, 2021 and improve its quality—by publicizing Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, mailed photo- findings long before they reach journals, copies of draft manuscripts to groups of biologists (see sidebar, helping researchers get rapid feedback on p. 1348); the short-lived project was followed in 1991 by arXiv, a their work, and giving a leg up to young re- nonprofit preprint server for physics now at Cornell University. searchers who don’t yet have many publi- In 1999, Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, then-director of NIH, cations. Some see little difference between proposed a similar server for biology, but journal publishers saw posting a preprint and presenting unpub- it as a threat. In 2003, however, arXiv opened a quantitative biol- lished findings at a meeting, except that ogy section. And in 2007, Nature Publishing launched a server called Nature Precedings, the preprint audience can be far larger. which collated more than 2000 manuscripts, mostly in biology, before folding in 2012. Many biologists remain wary, however. The concept really gained traction in November 2013, when CSHL launched bioRxiv Some worry that competitors will steal as a way to promote scientific communication. It had the weight of CSHL behind it, their data or ideas, or rush to publish along with commitments from scores of volunteers to post their own preprints and help similar work. Others predict that preprint screen submissions. Recently, bioRxiv has drawn support from a deep-pocketed source, servers will become a time sink, as scien- the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) funded by Facebook Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg tists spend hours trying to sift through an and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan. immense mishmash of papers of various CSHL isn’t alone in promoting preprints. Other servers have sprung up, and early quality. And some researchers fear that last year, a nonprofit called ASAPbio, incorporated in San Francisco, California, began easy, rapid publication could foster pre- deploying preprint “ambassadors,” enthusiasts who evangelize to their colleagues, and print wars—in which the findings in one holding meetings on such topics as how funders and journals view preprints. preprint are quickly attacked in another, Major research funders have also moved to legitimize preprints. The U.K. Medical SCIENCE sometimes within hours. Such online Research Council and the Wellcome Trust in London, as well as NIH and the Howard squabbles could leave the public bewil- Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, now encourage grantees to cite dered and erode trust in scientists. preprints—not just peer-reviewed papers—in grant proposals. CZI has even made post- Like it or not, however, the rough and ing a preprint (at the same time as the paper is submitted to a journal) a requirement tumble new world of biology preprints for its grantees. Preprints have also gotten some indirect, but highly placed, endorse- has arrived. For those debating whether to ments. “I’ve yet to see any instance where somebody was harmed by that early reveal of ILLUSTRATION: G. GRULLÓN/ G. ILLUSTRATION: take the plunge, Science offers this guide. the work that they’re doing,” NIH Director Francis Collins says. SCIENCE sciencemag.org 29 SEPTEMBER 2017 • VOL 357 ISSUE 6358 1345 Corrected 2 November 2017. See full text. Published by AAAS DA_0929NewsFeaturesR1.indd 1345 11/2/17 2:23 PM NEWS | FEATURES Who is posting biology preprints? A wide array of scientists. BioRxiv counts institutions in China. One prolific bioRxiv author—with seven more than 11,000 corresponding authors and preprints—is a self-described independent bioinformatics re- 63,000 unique authors in total, 56% from searcher in India and (according to one paper) a Buddhist monk. outside the United States. Hundreds of life Neuroscientist Leslie Vosshall of The Rockefeller University in scientists have posted on other free non- New York City, who describes herself as a “Fidel Castro” spread- profit and commercial servers, such as PeerJ ing the preprint revolution, sees two main groups embracing Preprints. Researchers in computational preprints: midcareer, established scientists who “can afford to fields such as bioinformatics and genomics take the risk” and millennials, “who share everything. They get it were early adopters of bioRxiv. Neuroscientists were slower to right away.” embrace the service, but the field is now one of bioRxiv’s largest Preprint servers have also become a go-to outlet for researchers categories, making up 15% of all papers. seeking to air critiques of controversial findings. Journals may not Some preprint authors are prominent researchers with large be interested in publishing such contrarian studies, which bioRxiv followings, including genomicist Eric Lander of the Broad Insti- users can label as “contradictory results,” says bioRxiv co-founder tute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as synthetic biologist John Inglis of CSHL. And the online world can enable very rapid George Church and ancient DNA researcher David Reich, both of responses: After genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter’s Human Lon- Harvard University. Also preprint fans: two leaders of research gevity Institute in San Diego, California, published a paper last into the CRISPR gene-editing tool, Feng Zhang of the Broad month claiming it could predict faces from DNA, critics responded Downloaded from Institute and Jennifer Doudna of the University of California within a day with a bioRxiv preprint slamming the study. Venter (UC), Berkeley. But plenty are less known, including many from soon parried—with another bioRxiv preprint. Who is not on board? http://science.sciencemag.org/ The vast majority of biologists. Although see a polished paper in a journal, not a draft that could have errors. bioRxiv has grown rapidly, the more than 1200 And he thinks that rushing to post preprints adds to the pressures preprints deposited in it in August still repre- on researchers. “Preprint advocates might think that they are a pre- sented just 1.3% of the 93,000 papers added to scription to fix the rat race, but I think it just puts the rats in a more PubMed, the NIH-run database of biomedical convoluted maze,” he wrote in July on the blog Small Pond Science. abstracts, during that month. Some researchers avoid posting to preprint archives because they “It’s not obvious to me yet that there is believe that the screening and sorting performed by traditional any advantage” to preprints, says stem cell journals serves readers well. “For the nonexpert, such archives are researcher Sean Morrison of the University of Texas Southwestern very difficult to navigate, and the filter of peer review is essential,” Medical Center in Dallas, who shares his latest work at meetings. says cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University in For others, the reluctance reflects concern that journals will reject Baltimore, Maryland, who has posted only a few preprints. on March 19, 2021 a study that was already posted as a preprint. Until recently, many Researchers who conduct complex lab experiments also appear to banned releasing papers to the public before formal publication. be more reluctant to post. Within some bioRxiv categories that have Now, most basic science journals (including Science) say they will ac- begun to take off, such as plant science and cancer biology, papers cept papers posted as preprints (see Editorial, p.

Load more