https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-024-00641-4
Acelerar el progreso científico con preprints
Nature Computational Science
Reconocemos la importancia de la publicación de preprints para comunicar los resultados de la investigación y animamos a nuestros autores a utilizar este servicio.
Desde su lanzamiento, Nature Computational Science ha implementado múltiples políticas y flujos de trabajo con el objetivo de fomentar la transparencia y la apertura de la investigación. Por ejemplo, nuestros autores deben cumplir unas directrices específicas relativas a la comunicación y la reproducibilidad de los resultados publicados, incluida la disponibilidad de los datos y códigos pertinentes. La revista también lleva a cabo revisiones por pares de los códigos(1), exige la citación de los datos y códigos(2) y ofrece la opción de una revisión por pares transparente(3), en la que los comentarios de los revisores, las réplicas de los autores y las cartas con las decisiones editoriales se recopilan y publican junto con el manuscrito si los autores optan por este servicio. Además, también animamos a nuestros autores a depositar y compartir un preprint de la versión original enviada de su manuscrito antes o durante la revisión por pares, lo que representa otra oportunidad para aumentar la apertura en todo el proceso de investigación.
Los preprints no son nada nuevo. De hecho, tienen una larga trayectoria en las ciencias físicas: arXiv, el popular repositorio de acceso abierto de preprints, se lanzó en 1991 principalmente como un archivo de física y luego se expandió a otras áreas como las matemáticas, la astronomía, la informática, la biología cuantitativa y la estadística. Desde entonces, muchas otras áreas han adoptado el depósito de preprints, entre ellas, las ciencias biológicas y médicas, la química y las ciencias sociales, y los investigadores disponen de un gran número de archivos, algunos de los cuales se utilizan más que otros. Crossref, una organización sin ánimo de lucro que registra identificadores de objetos digitales (DOI) para objetos de investigación, informó hace seis años(4) que el volumen de preprints creció aproximadamente un 30 % entre 2016 y 2018, en comparación con un crecimiento de los artículos del 2-3 % durante el mismo periodo.
Pero, ¿por qué han aumentado en popularidad las preprints? ¿Por qué los investigadores compartirían preprints de sus manuscritos?
La revisión por pares puede ser un proceso largo. Aunque los editores hacen todo lo posible por proporcionar a los autores una decisión oportuna sobre sus artículos, pueden surgir algunos problemas que retrasen la publicación final de un artículo. Los preprints ayudan a minimizar los retrasos en la comunicación de los resultados de la investigación, evitando el período de espera al permitir a los autores compartir y difundir públicamente sus artículos tan pronto como estén listos para hacerlo. De este modo, los autores pueden reivindicar sus hallazgos y establecer la prioridad del trabajo que han realizado. Además, las preimpresiones son de acceso abierto y, dependiendo del servidor, tienen DOI asociados, lo que significa que otros investigadores pueden encontrarlas y citarlas fácilmente. Los preprints también pueden complementar la revisión por pares tradicional, ya que los pares pueden descubrir el trabajo y ponerse en contacto con los autores para sugerirles mejoras. Research(5) ha demostrado que los preprints pueden mejorar la visibilidad y las citas tempranas, y los principales financiadores, entre los que se encuentran los Institutos Nacionales de Salud de EE. UU., el Wellcome Trust y la Fundación Simons, por nombrar algunos, han expresado su apoyo al intercambio de preprints en los últimos años. Muchas universidades también han fomentado la inclusión de publicaciones en servidores de preprints como parte de las solicitudes de contratación y permanencia/promoción del profesorado.
Huelga decir que, dado que los preprints pueden publicarse sin revisión por pares, no deben presentarse como información contrastada y, por lo tanto, hay que actuar con cautela al utilizar los resultados descritos. Dado que los preprints no solo están disponibles para los científicos, sino también para el público en general, existe la preocupación de que datos potencialmente poco fiables puedan pasar a formar parte del discurso público a través de los medios de comunicación tradicionales y las redes sociales, lo que de hecho ocurrió(6) durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Servidores como bioRxiv y medRxiv, por ejemplo, incluyen una advertencia de que los preprints no han sido revisados por pares y que no deben utilizarse como guía para la práctica clínica. La revisión por pares sigue siendo importante, y los preprints no pretenden sustituir a las revistas científicas: al fin y al cabo, las revistas no solo sirven para gestionar el proceso de revisión por pares, sino también para establecer y mantener unos estándares elevados y unas políticas estrictas para la presentación y publicación de alta calidad de los resultados de las investigaciones. Sin embargo, esto no significa que los preprints no puedan utilizarse de forma responsable para la difusión de la investigación.
En Nature Computational Science, junto con otras revistas de Nature Portfolio, reconocemos la importancia de la publicación de preprints en el proceso de debate científico abierto y fomentamos activamente la publicación de preprints para artículos de investigación primaria, tal y como se describe en nuestra política. La publicación de un preprint no compromete la novedad del estudio correspondiente y, por lo tanto, no pone en peligro la consideración del estudio en nuestra revista. Además, la versión que se envió originalmente a la revista puede publicarse como preprint en cualquier momento durante el proceso de revisión por pares. Nuestros autores pueden elegir cualquier servidor de preprints que deseen; alternativamente, en el momento de la presentación, pueden optar por utilizar In Review, un servicio gratuito de depósito de preprints integrado en la revista de Research Square. En el momento de la publicación, Nature Computational Science ofrece a los autores la opción de añadir un enlace desde el artículo publicado a su preprint correspondiente, lo que garantiza que los enlaces sean visibles para todos los lectores.
Creemos que los preprints constituyen un excelente medio para la rápida difusión de hallazgos relevantes. Siempre que la comunidad científica y los medios de comunicación comprendan que el material puede no haber sido sometido a revisión por pares, las ventajas superan con creces las limitaciones.
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• Editorial
• Published: 29 May 2024
Accelerating scientific progress with preprints
Nature Computational Science
We recognize the importance of preprint posting in communicating research findings and encourage our authors to make use of this service.
Since its launch, Nature Computational Science has implemented multiple policies and workflows with the goal of fostering research transparency and openness. For instance, our authors must adhere to specific guidelines regarding the reporting and reproducibility of published results, including the availability of relevant data and code. The journal also carries out code peer review1, mandates data and code citation2, and offers the option of transparent peer review3, in which reviewers’ comments, authors’ rebuttal and editorial decision letters are compiled and published alongside the manuscript if the authors opt in to this service. In addition, we also encourage our authors to deposit and share a preprint of the original submitted version of their manuscript prior to or during peer review, which represents another opportunity for increasing openness throughout the research process.
Preprints are certainly not new. As a matter of fact, they have had a long history in the physical sciences: arXiv, the popular open-access repository of preprints, launched back in 1991 primarily as a physics archive and then expanded to other areas such as mathematics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, and statistics. Since then, many other areas have embraced the deposition of preprints — including, but not limited to, biological and medical sciences, chemistry, and social sciences — and a large number of archives have become available to researchers, with some repositories more widely used than others. Crossref — a non-profit organization that registers digital object identifiers (DOIs) for research objects — reported six years ago4 that the volume of preprints grew approximately 30% in 2016–2018, compared to an article growth of 2–3% for the same period.
But why have preprints increased in popularity? Why would researchers share preprints of their manuscripts?
Peer review can be a long process. Even though editors do their best to provide authors with a timely decision on their papers, there may be some issues along the way that delay the eventual publication of a paper. Preprints help minimize delays in communicating the research findings, circumventing the waiting period by allowing authors to publicly share and disseminate their articles as soon as they are ready to do so. As such, authors can lay claim to their findings and establish priority for the work that they have done. In addition, preprints are open access and, depending on the server, have associated DOIs, meaning that they are easy for other researchers to find and cite. Preprints can also supplement traditional peer review, as peers can discover the work and contact the authors with suggestions for improvements. Research5 has shown that preprints can improve early visibility and citations, and major funders, including the US National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, and the Simons Foundation, to name a few, have voiced their support for preprint sharing in recent years. Many universities have also encouraged listing publications on preprint servers as part of applications for faculty hiring and tenure/promotion.
It goes without saying that, because preprints can be posted without peer review, they should not be reported as established information and therefore caution must be taken when making use of the described results. Because preprints are not available only to scientists, but to the general public as well, there is a concern that potentially unreliable data can become part of the public discourse through traditional and social media — which actually happened6 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Servers such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, for instance, include a warning that preprints have not been peer-reviewed and that they should not be used to guide clinical practice. Peer review is still important, and preprints are not intended to replace scientific journals: after all, journals serve not only to manage the peer-review process but also to establish and uphold high standards and stringent policies for high-quality reporting and publishing of research findings. This does not mean, however, that preprints cannot be used responsibly for dissemination of research.
We at Nature Computational Science, together with other Nature Portfolio journals, recognize the important role of preprint posting in the process of open scientific discourse and actively encourage the posting of preprints for primary research papers, as described in our policy. Having posted a preprint does not compromise the novelty of the corresponding study, and therefore, does not jeopardize consideration of the study at our journal. In addition, the version that was originally submitted to the journal can be posted as a preprint at any time during the peer review process. Our authors can choose any preprint server of their liking; alternatively, at the time of submission, they can opt in to use In Review, a free journal-integrated preprint deposition service from Research Square. At the time of publication, Nature Computational Science offers authors the option to add a link from the published paper to its corresponding preprint, thus ensuring that the links are visible to all readers.
We believe that preprints provide a great vehicle for rapid dissemination of relevant findings. Provided that the scientific community and the media understand that the material might not have been vetted by peer review, the benefits largely outweigh the limitations.
References
• Nat. Comput. Sci. 2, 277 (2022).
• Nat. Comput. Sci. 1, 89 (2021).
• Nat. Comput. Sci. 1, 165 (2021).
• Lin, J. Preprints growth rate ten times higher than journal articles. Crossref (31 May 2018); https://www.crossref.org/blog/preprints-growth-rate-ten-times-higher-than-journal-articles/
• Conroy, G. Preprints boost article citations and mentions. Nature Index (9 July 2019); https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/preprints-boost-article-citations-and-mentions
Forster, V. No, the coronavirus was not genetically engineered to put pieces of HIV in it. Forbes (2 February 2020); https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/02/no-coronavirus-was-not-bioengineered-to-put-pieces-of-hiv-in-it/?sh=413daf2956cb
Since its launch, Nature Computational Science has implemented multiple policies and workflows with the goal of fostering research transparency and openness. For instance, our authors must adhere to specific guidelines regarding the reporting and reproducibility of published results, including the availability of relevant data and code. The journal also carries out code peer review1, mandates data and code citation2, and offers the option of transparent peer review3, in which reviewers’ comments, authors’ rebuttal and editorial decision letters are compiled and published alongside the manuscript if the authors opt in to this service. In addition, we also encourage our authors to deposit and share a preprint of the original submitted version of their manuscript prior to or during peer review, which represents another opportunity for increasing openness throughout the research process.
Preprints are certainly not new. As a matter of fact, they have had a long history in the physical sciences: arXiv, the popular open-access repository of preprints, launched back in 1991 primarily as a physics archive and then expanded to other areas such as mathematics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, and statistics. Since then, many other areas have embraced the deposition of preprints — including, but not limited to, biological and medical sciences, chemistry, and social sciences — and a large number of archives have become available to researchers, with some repositories more widely used than others. Crossref — a non-profit organization that registers digital object identifiers (DOIs) for research objects — reported six years ago4 that the volume of preprints grew approximately 30% in 2016–2018, compared to an article growth of 2–3% for the same period.
But why have preprints increased in popularity? Why would researchers share preprints of their manuscripts?
Peer review can be a long process. Even though editors do their best to provide authors with a timely decision on their papers, there may be some issues along the way that delay the eventual publication of a paper. Preprints help minimize delays in communicating the research findings, circumventing the waiting period by allowing authors to publicly share and disseminate their articles as soon as they are ready to do so. As such, authors can lay claim to their findings and establish priority for the work that they have done. In addition, preprints are open access and, depending on the server, have associated DOIs, meaning that they are easy for other researchers to find and cite. Preprints can also supplement traditional peer review, as peers can discover the work and contact the authors with suggestions for improvements. Research5 has shown that preprints can improve early visibility and citations, and major funders, including the US National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, and the Simons Foundation, to name a few, have voiced their support for preprint sharing in recent years. Many universities have also encouraged listing publications on preprint servers as part of applications for faculty hiring and tenure/promotion.
It goes without saying that, because preprints can be posted without peer review, they should not be reported as established information and therefore caution must be taken when making use of the described results. Because preprints are not available only to scientists, but to the general public as well, there is a concern that potentially unreliable data can become part of the public discourse through traditional and social media — which actually happened6 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Servers such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, for instance, include a warning that preprints have not been peer-reviewed and that they should not be used to guide clinical practice. Peer review is still important, and preprints are not intended to replace scientific journals: after all, journals serve not only to manage the peer-review process but also to establish and uphold high standards and stringent policies for high-quality reporting and publishing of research findings. This does not mean, however, that preprints cannot be used responsibly for dissemination of research.
We at Nature Computational Science, together with other Nature Portfolio journals, recognize the important role of preprint posting in the process of open scientific discourse and actively encourage the posting of preprints for primary research papers, as described in our policy. Having posted a preprint does not compromise the novelty of the corresponding study, and therefore, does not jeopardize consideration of the study at our journal. In addition, the version that was originally submitted to the journal can be posted as a preprint at any time during the peer review process. Our authors can choose any preprint server of their liking; alternatively, at the time of submission, they can opt in to use In Review, a free journal-integrated preprint deposition service from Research Square. At the time of publication, Nature Computational Science offers authors the option to add a link from the published paper to its corresponding preprint, thus ensuring that the links are visible to all readers.
We believe that preprints provide a great vehicle for rapid dissemination of relevant findings. Provided that the scientific community and the media understand that the material might not have been vetted by peer review, the benefits largely outweigh the limitations.
References
• Nat. Comput. Sci. 2, 277 (2022).
• Nat. Comput. Sci. 1, 89 (2021).
• Nat. Comput. Sci. 1, 165 (2021).
• Lin, J. Preprints growth rate ten times higher than journal articles. Crossref (31 May 2018); https://www.crossref.org/blog/preprints-growth-rate-ten-times-higher-than-journal-articles/
• Conroy, G. Preprints boost article citations and mentions. Nature Index (9 July 2019); https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/preprints-boost-article-citations-and-mentions
Forster, V. No, the coronavirus was not genetically engineered to put pieces of HIV in it. Forbes (2 February 2020); https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/02/no-coronavirus-was-not-bioengineered-to-put-pieces-of-hiv-in-it/?sh=413daf2956cb
