What Are Preprints?

The implications and controversy around preprints has become a popular point of discussion for journal editors. Preprints are defined as “a scholarly manuscript posted by the author(s) in an openly accessible platform, usually before or in parallel with the peer review process” (Committee on Publication Ethics [COPE], 2018). While not a common phenomenon in nursing publications, preprints and their use in scholarly publishing are a common practice in disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and mathematics. This is likely influenced by research culture accepting and embracing the practice and the launching of discipline-specific preprint servers. This editorial will give Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association readers an introduction to this important issue in publishing and how it pertains to nursing.

Preprint servers are online platforms that allow researchers to disseminate their work more quickly than publishing in traditional print or online peer-reviewed journals. They are a free service to authors and readers, and their long-term fiscal sustainability is unclear; they rely mostly on grants and organizational sponsorship. Preprint servers offer many advantages to researchers, including early communication of scientific results, a forum for logging comments or critiques of the work, and the advantage of using this feedback before submitting to a more formal peer-reviewed journal (COPE, 2018). Examples of preprint servers include arXiv (physics, mathematics, and engineering), ChemRxiv (chemistry), Peer J Preprints (biological, environmental, medical, health sciences, and computer sciences), and psyRxiv (psychological sciences). Many other preprint services are in existence. Notably, there is not a preprint server specifically focused on nursing research, but medRxiv is expected to launch in the fall of 2018 and we may then see a possible forum.

For editors, preprint servers can offer a view of work in progress and the opportunity to invite submission of that scholarly work, particularly relevant to their scientific field, to their journals. Preprint servers can expedite communication about a research topic and some researchers see this as valuable (Maslove, 2018). Additionally, some journals have arranged the ability for an author to transfer a paper posted on a preprint server easily into their formal submission systems, benefitting both author and journal There are, however, disadvantages and pitfalls to preprint servers. The predominant issues involve protecting participant confidentiality, ensuring that posted research was conducted in an ethical manner, and misinterpretation of results that have not yet been through a formal peer-review process, especially by lay readers (Johansson, Reich, Meyers, & Lipsitch, 2018). Papers posted to preprint servers do not undergo any formal peer-review processes. Preprint servers may review the material for libelous or defamatory information, but generally, there is no review of manuscripts submitted to preprint servers. Therefore, the content has not had the benefit of expert review and may not meet the level of rigor required of papers published in high-quality journals. From a publication ethics perspective, preprint servers rely almost completely on the integrity and honesty of the individuals posting the manuscripts. This might be viewed as potentially problematic in an era of increasing concern about publication ethics violations.

If authors wish to post their manuscripts on preprint servers ahead of submitting them to peer-reviewed journals, they must understand whether or not the desired journals accept submissions that have been posted as preprints. Some journals have licensing requirements that might preclude submission of content already posted as a preprint. Authors who wish to submit their “preprint to a journal should check the [copyright] license type required by the preprint platform to ensure it will be compatible with their target journal, and vice versa” (COPE, 2018). It is the author’s responsibility to completely understand the ramifications of using a preprint server prior to formal submission of the work.

There are currently no industry-wide standards for the management of preprints and the various servers that post papers. However, preprints posted on a server that is a member of CrossRef do receive a digital object identifier (doi) number, and if posted content is published later in a journal, the preprint server host will update the preprint metadata to associate the post with the published article, which is then the version of record (CrossRef, n.d.).

While nursing does not seem to have embraced the use of preprint servers, I suspect it is only a matter of time, maybe just months away when medRxiv is launched, before journal editors begin seeing submitted manuscripts that have been posted previously as preprints. A few nursing journals already accept submissions that are posted as preprints and have requirements for submissions to their traditional peer-reviewed journals. The issues of licensing and copyright can vary by journal, and authors are encouraged to thoroughly understand the policies and guidelines of any journal where they hope to submit. Additionally, journals need to have a policy about whether they accept citations to preprint material, and authors need to be aware of this policy prior to submitting a paper that uses preprint material as a reference.

Preprint servers are one more aspect in the ever-changing world of academic publishing. The best action for nurse authors and editors is to seek and understand information about the implications of disseminating nursing research on preprint servers.