I was impressed with the qualities of the pre-prints during the pandemic. great for looking at the data. There were even a few occasions that I read some of the reviews asking questions and minor corrections. Now they are now endemic and lost a lot of the qualities that made them worth reviewing.
Very helpful article, thank you! Another concern I'd have is, are articles "protected" in the sense that, what's to prevent another researcher taking the idea and running with it before the original author submits for peer review (with revisions based on the preprint community feedback)? Does that happen? Also, are these preprint platforms open to the social sciences?
Interesting questions! I've seen some references to psychology research on pre-print servers, but I am not sure about the rest of the social sciences (or humanities, for that matter); my experience is primarily in the biomedical literature.
Ironically, part of why some people use pre-prints at all is to stake a claim on who discovered something first before they get scooped! I would think if someone else copied a pre-print paper and submitted it in toto as their own work to a peer-reviewed journal it would probably be found out (journals have rules against such things and many use software that detects things in various databases) and dealt with as a straightforward matter of plagiarism.
A less clear matter would be where someone sees a pre-print study, steals the IDEA but does their own original study and rushes to get that published first. That probably *would* be allowed, although it's a risk anyone doing research in a competitive, fast moving field faces, and diffusion of ideas is essential to scientific breakthroughs, so some might view it as a feature instead of a bug. Before pre-prints got big, preliminary work presented at conferences and submitted as partial abstracts could face a similar risk to the authors, but it hasn't been a huge issue as far as I'm aware.
Over the last few decades, science and scientists have moved from publish or perish to publish _and_ perish, with the increased pressure to produce quantity over quality. There's an increased tendency to submit for publication any and every little idea or result. And, of course, as the various arXiv outlets have gradually gained status of semi-published or quasi-published, the acceleration of the production of submediocre work became inevitable. Not only there isn't any peer review for uploading preprints on these arXives, but there isn't any kind of self-censorship, either... Alas, this seems completely irreversible; in fact, it's only getting worse and worse...
The fact that career advancement for scientists in academia (and sometimes government or the private sector) depends on publishing a large volume of papers definitely creates a problematic incentive for quantity over quality, and pre-prints could contribute to that. On the other hand, the top journals have a huge bias towards novel results (over incremental or verification work), and the traditional peer-review system would often reject studies with negative or "unsexy" results. And at least in veterinary medicine, replication studies are de-prioritized, so pre-prints could potentially fix those issues in the literature. Pre-prints also allow a larger pool of scientists across the globe to critique studies before they are finalized; one could almost view it as a large, open-source form of peer review. There's a mix of good and bad for sure.
I was impressed with the qualities of the pre-prints during the pandemic. great for looking at the data. There were even a few occasions that I read some of the reviews asking questions and minor corrections. Now they are now endemic and lost a lot of the qualities that made them worth reviewing.
Love the pre-print overview! Thank you
Very helpful article, thank you! Another concern I'd have is, are articles "protected" in the sense that, what's to prevent another researcher taking the idea and running with it before the original author submits for peer review (with revisions based on the preprint community feedback)? Does that happen? Also, are these preprint platforms open to the social sciences?
Interesting questions! I've seen some references to psychology research on pre-print servers, but I am not sure about the rest of the social sciences (or humanities, for that matter); my experience is primarily in the biomedical literature.
Ironically, part of why some people use pre-prints at all is to stake a claim on who discovered something first before they get scooped! I would think if someone else copied a pre-print paper and submitted it in toto as their own work to a peer-reviewed journal it would probably be found out (journals have rules against such things and many use software that detects things in various databases) and dealt with as a straightforward matter of plagiarism.
A less clear matter would be where someone sees a pre-print study, steals the IDEA but does their own original study and rushes to get that published first. That probably *would* be allowed, although it's a risk anyone doing research in a competitive, fast moving field faces, and diffusion of ideas is essential to scientific breakthroughs, so some might view it as a feature instead of a bug. Before pre-prints got big, preliminary work presented at conferences and submitted as partial abstracts could face a similar risk to the authors, but it hasn't been a huge issue as far as I'm aware.
Over the last few decades, science and scientists have moved from publish or perish to publish _and_ perish, with the increased pressure to produce quantity over quality. There's an increased tendency to submit for publication any and every little idea or result. And, of course, as the various arXiv outlets have gradually gained status of semi-published or quasi-published, the acceleration of the production of submediocre work became inevitable. Not only there isn't any peer review for uploading preprints on these arXives, but there isn't any kind of self-censorship, either... Alas, this seems completely irreversible; in fact, it's only getting worse and worse...
The fact that career advancement for scientists in academia (and sometimes government or the private sector) depends on publishing a large volume of papers definitely creates a problematic incentive for quantity over quality, and pre-prints could contribute to that. On the other hand, the top journals have a huge bias towards novel results (over incremental or verification work), and the traditional peer-review system would often reject studies with negative or "unsexy" results. And at least in veterinary medicine, replication studies are de-prioritized, so pre-prints could potentially fix those issues in the literature. Pre-prints also allow a larger pool of scientists across the globe to critique studies before they are finalized; one could almost view it as a large, open-source form of peer review. There's a mix of good and bad for sure.