Publishing the research results is difficult, sometimes more difficult than doing the research itself. The peer-review process takes a long time and any rejections from one journal and re-submission to others takes even longer. Alternative publishing services such as BioRxiv (http://biorxiv.org/) provides, especially for young researchers, an opportunity to make their findings readily available to others. But some also critcize for such preprint publications pointing out the risks of misleading results and low quality science. What are your suggestions to early career professionals for publishing such pre-prints?
Hi Babu,
I have been asking myself the same question recently, so my considerations may be useful.
Here’s a list of some possible advantages and disadvantages I came up with.
Advantages:
- Your work is shared (much) sooner than it would otherwise be. This allows science in your field to proceed faster because others can see your work and can use it to inform their own research, grant applications, study questions, etc. An additional advantage for yourself and your research community is that it is easier for other people to be aware of you and what work you are currently involved with.
- The manuscript deposited on bioRxiv gets a doi, which means it can be cited and the work is permanently registered. In competitive fields this means that you can show precedence. From a personal CV standpoint, you may gain citations that you would otherwise never have.
- As soon as the manuscript is published in a peer-reviewed journal, a link appears on the bioRxiv website, so people can find the peer-reviewed version of the article.
Disadvantages:
- The manuscript has not yet been peer-reviewed, which means that errors that would have been filtered out through peer review can remain in the manuscript. On the other hand, peer review is anything but perfect, and one should always be critical when reading an article, whether or not it has been peer-reviewed.
- It may be possible that readers who have downloaded the pre-print to their reference library keep using this version even after the peer-reviewed manuscript has been published. This could then result in citations of the preprint instead of the published article, and lower the number of citations of the published version. This problem seems minor though, for two reasons: 1) People are aware that this is a pre-print, which means that most will be likely to search for a new version when citing the paper. 2) These “missed” citations still go to your own work and your own CV.
Many journals, incl. high-profile journals such as eLife, PNAS, or PLOS, actively encourage online archiving of pre-prints.
Personally I have become enthusiastic about archiving pre-prints, and encourage my colleagues to do the same, but would love to hear of any downsides I have not yet considered.
Best regards,
Benny
Hi Babu,
I have been asking myself the same question recently, so my considerations may be useful.
Here’s a list of some possible advantages and disadvantages I came up with.
Advantages:
- Your work is shared (much) sooner than it would otherwise be. This allows science in your field to proceed faster because others can see your work and can use it to inform their own research, grant applications, study questions, etc. An additional advantage for yourself and your research community is that it is easier for other people to be aware of you and what work you are currently involved with.
- The manuscript deposited on bioRxiv gets a doi, which means it can be cited and the work is permanently registered. In competitive fields this means that you can show precedence. From a personal CV standpoint, you may gain citations that you would otherwise never have.
- As soon as the manuscript is published in a peer-reviewed journal, a link appears on the bioRxiv website, so people can find the peer-reviewed version of the article.
Disadvantages:
- The manuscript has not yet been peer-reviewed, which means that errors that would have been filtered out through peer review can remain in the manuscript. On the other hand, peer review is anything but perfect, and one should always be critical when reading an article, whether or not it has been peer-reviewed.
- It may be possible that readers who have downloaded the pre-print to their reference library keep using this version even after the peer-reviewed manuscript has been published. This could then result in citations of the preprint instead of the published article, and lower the number of citations of the published version. This problem seems minor though, for two reasons: 1) People are aware that this is a pre-print, which means that most will be likely to search for a new version when citing the paper. 2) These “missed” citations still go to your own work and your own CV.
Many journals, incl. high-profile journals such as eLife, PNAS, or PLOS, actively encourage online archiving of pre-prints.
Personally I have become enthusiastic about archiving pre-prints, and encourage my colleagues to do the same, but would love to hear of any downsides I have not yet considered.
Best regards,
Benny
Thanks Dr. Imran & Benny for your suggestions!
Benny,
Your detailed information about advantages and disadvantages is quite useful for me. I am working on a manuscript which is near to complete and the results would be useful if its available immediately. Peer review takes at least another couple of months. That's why I am wondering to publish on BiorXive and wanted to know the experience of other people.
Do you know if there are journals who don't accept the manuscript with pre-prints archived?
The bioRxiv website provides two links to lists of journal preprint policies (http://biorxiv.org/about-biorxiv), maybe you can find the journal you're interested in there?
We have collected some thoughts on preprint publication: it is a great step towards Gentle Science: http://www.bioblast.at/index.php/Gentle_Science
I think it's important to know the journals' policy with regards to preprints.
For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/434257b
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy
I will termed the Biorxiv as a predatory database, and various publication groups including PloS etc have been involved in mutual cheating. They fraudulently transfer those article submitted to PloS journals for consideration to BioRxiv and upon rejection during peer review, the database refuse to take the article down
Most serious implication with publication of pre-print on BioRxiv/aRxiv or any open source system you can't publish your article to any journals which follow double-blind review processes. So, until unless you are not limited with your work and don't require those journals, it seems okay with publication of pre-print.
Atul Pandey you should be able to publish in most journals with double-blind review, because most journals accept a publication as a pre-print, as it is stated in the link supplied by Roberto Ruiz-Cordero :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy
If that was not the case, even conference publications would be considered not publishable in peer reviewed journals.
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