"Preprint server."

At first glance, it seems like the kind of techie lingo one might overhear at a gaming convention, but preprint servers are big news. The spirited discussions at the recent ASAPbio meeting have provoked the attention of both the Twittersphere and traditional media. They have also prompted pro and con discussions within the scientific community. One thing that everyone seems to agree on is this: preprint servers are a lot more interesting than they sound.

So let's start with Cell Press's outlook on preprint servers. Our policy is straightforward. Can authors submit a paper that is already on a preprint server to Cell or other Cell Press journals and expect that paper to be considered as usual? The answer is yes. We have just one request: we want to talk to you about it first.

The statement currently on our website reads, "If you have questions about whether posting a manuscript or data that you plan to submit to this journal on an openly available preprint server or poster repository would affect consideration, we encourage you to contact an editor so that we may provide more specific guidance." Cell Press journals have published many papers that were available on a preprint server before they were submitted to us, and we're happy to have published them. So what do "in principle" and "many cases" refer to, and why are we asking authors to have a conversation with the editor before submitting?

When looking at new approaches or ideas, we want to know how they advance science. Do they add value to the scientific community? Will they bring unintended consequences? If so, how might these be mitigated? We think biology preprints are still at the "information gathering" stage.

It was stated at the ASAPbio meeting that the state of scientific publishing is worse now than it has ever been, which struck me as surprising, coming at the end of two decades of unprecedented evolution and innovation throughout the scientific publishing enterprise.

Digital dissemination, open access, collaborative peer review, electronic submissions, new journals with new editorial models and practices, better search engines, PubMed Central, institutional and funding body repositories, text and data mining tools, plagiarism identification, heightened attention to best practices and ethics, reference linking to connect knowledge maps, improved data management and sharing practices, new forms of credit in altmetrics, post-publication peer review, more granular author accountability, and social sharing have all come onto the stage since 1995. What does this say? Are we as a community moving in the right direction? Will adding preprints to this long list turn things around, or will ASAPbio's 2020 plenary speaker say again that publishing is in a worse state than ever before?

That's why we want to talk to biologists about preprint servers, because the idea of them is new to biology, and no one seems to know what it means for our field (yes, I know it's worked well in physics for 25 years, and that's certainly encouraging for success in biology but by itself isn't enough to move forward without thinking things through). We want to know what it is that biologists want and how you envision a future that puts preprints front and center, because once you start thinking about them, they raise a lot of questions that don't seem to have easy or obvious answers. I always worry about advocates who fail to acknowledge risks or downsides and to discuss them openly and thoughtfully. That's what turns critical thinking into politics or propaganda.

Here are some questions we think are worth discussing:

1. What is the status of a preprint? Is it a publication?

There was much discussion at ASAPbio as to whether preprints had equivalent status to peer-reviewed articles

or instead would be considered "second-class citizens." There were strong proponents on both sides. What do

you think?

And what about citability? Scientists routinely share work in progress and receive feedback from the community when they present at conferences. No controversies or polemics there. These talks aren't typically citable, and that has never been considered a problem. If the goal of preprints truly is, similarly, to share and get feedback on work in progress, why do preprints need to be citable? Would it serve the purpose to have a platform where scientists can post their manuscripts and other scientists can read and comment on them and that's it? Without citability, a preprint is not trying to be a pseudo-article sneaking into credibility through a back door. What are the downsides of non-citable preprints?

2. Do papers on preprint servers establish priority claims?

A significant fraction of requests from authors to put work on a preprint server arises from the desire to get some kind of scoop protection. Does this mean that many biologists see preprints in this way? And if you put up a preprint out of a desire to claim priority, does somebody else's preprint count as scooping you? Should we as editors think of preprints as part of the existing literature in evaluating newly submitted papers?

3. How do we advocate for the importance of peer review while also encouraging the dissemination and promotion of non-peer-reviewed science?

Science advocates all over the world are working tirelessly to help non-scientists, especially policymakers, to understand the importance of peer review, evidence, intellectual rigor, and credibility in the scientific community. Laypeople are beset with pseudo-scientific nonsense, much of it carefully packaged and artfully sold, and programs like Ask For Evidence and Sense about Science are trying to contain the damage and educate the public on the importance of peer review.

How do preprint servers affect these efforts? What message does a preprint server send to the public and policymakers about peer review? Is it good enough to post unreviewed work under a caveat lector banner and assume that everyone understands (or reads) the fine print? If we as a community are so eager to share, cite, and disseminate non-peer-reviewed findings, should we just do away with peer review?

4. Is it appropriate to post a paper to a preprint server after it's gone out for review?

If so, should comments that are posted on the preprint (positive and negative) factor into the editorial decision? Does it matter who the comments come from (collaborators or competitors)? And what is the urgency of peer review and publication decisions if the article is already available? Might reviewers justifiably deprioritize turning in their review in a timely way when a preprint has been posted?

5. What problem is a preprint server aiming to solve?

There are important concerns that motivate biologists to consider the idea of preprint publication. The big one is that the peer-review process can be protracted, sometimes for good reasons (peer reviewers recommend important experiments and revisions that may take many months) and sometimes maybe not (peer reviewers drag their feet or make unreasonable demands on authors).

During this process, the work is "off the grid" in some sense—the authors judged it ready for prime time, but the reviewers don't yet agree, and in the meantime, no one else seems to be in on the conversation. The peer-review process, particularly at journals with demanding editorial standards, can take months if the original submission needs further work, and it seems to limit in-depth feedback to the comments of just a few people. That said, there are also many journals with a range of editorial and peer-reviewer expectations (PLoS ONE promotes its focus on sound science) and/or where there is a fast-track publication option (sometimes as short as a two-week turnaround between submission and publication).

But if speed is the main motivator, and the community still supports the importance of peer review, are there other solutions that would speed up peer review rather than side-stepping it with preprints? As an example, as we were discussing how Cell Press might best contribute to resolving the current Zika crisis, the Wellcome Trust issued a statement that many journals signed on to stating that they would make all content concerning the Zika virus free to access and encouraging unrestricted dissemination of non-peer-reviewed content on preprint servers. We were concerned about the social responsibility of promoting trust in non-peer-reviewed research that has potential direct impact on human health and opted not to sign the Wellcome Trust declaration.

Instead, on February 17, we announced a policy that Cell Press would accelerate peer review for papers on Zika and focus our editorial evaluation on technical rigor and the urgency of getting the information out by working in collaboration with reviewers (all of whom were happy to accelerate their feedback) and committing the necessary resources on our end to speed up peer review. We also are making all Zika-related content freely available from the time of publication. To date, Cell Press journals have published nine papers on various aspects of Zika, with an average time of 27 days from submission to publication.

6. Is the motivation for preprints a desire to create a playing field on which all science is equal?

Some of the discussions at ASAPbio turned to concerns about the hegemony of journal brands and arguments that authors can judge the importance and validity of their own work. More than one participant said that preprints allow them to publish when they feel the work is ready, not when journal editors or reviewers judge it to be so. If we all agree that authors are the best evaluators of their own work, I ask again, do you think science needs peer review?

7. What are the impacts for scholarship?

Related to the issue of citability is a question about scholarship. Indulge me in a non-hypothetical scenario:

Author A publishes a paper in Cell this week. Three days after it's published, I receive an email from an outraged Author B. She posted a preprint manuscript on BioRxiv four months ago on the exact same topic with similar(or opposite) findings, and Author A doesn't cite in her work. Author B wants me/Cell to compel Author A to publish a Correction citing the preprint.

Now, if Author B's request had been related to a paper she published four months ago in JCB, and it was indeed on the same topic with same/contradictory findings, the answer would be easy. Good scholarship means linking your results to the relevant literature whether it is confirmatory or contradictory and is a basic requirement of good publishing. So yes, Author A would have to publish a Correction citing Author B's JCB paper.

But OK, back to the BioRxiv preprint case. First, put on your Author A hat. You didn't see and weren't influenced by Author B's preprint and don't want to cite it as pre-dating your findings. You don't want to publish a Correction. You also don't want to be compelled to check all the biology preprint servers (and yes, there will be many, see below) to stay current with everything you need to cite. Now put on your Author B hat. You've been strongly encouraged (and potentially mandated by your founder or institution) to post a citable preprint with the understanding that it establishes priority, but now no one is being required to cite or acknowledge that priority. In a world with preprint servers in biology, what is your view, the community view, on the the requirement to cite relevant preprints? What do I say to Authors A and B?

8. Are there an optimal number of biology preprint servers, and how is that managed?

There was general agreement at ASAPbio (save perhaps for the representatives of the two front-runner biology preprint servers, BioRxiv and PeerJ, neither of which seems eager to consolidate) that the biology community would be best served by a single comprehensive preprint server. Think arXiv for physics (which is also starting to expand into biology).

However, within the few short weeks since ASAPbio, I've already heard discussions about launching two or three more servers. It seems likely that every institution, funding body, and publisher will want their own that is in some way better or different than the others. Is a proliferation of preprint servers in biology a good thing? And if not, how would it be constrained, and who would constrain it? We certainly haven't been successful if you look at the proliferation of repositories (or journals).

9. Do preprint servers help or hurt information overload?

I consistently hear from scientists that there is too much to read and keep up with. If the expectation of scientists is that they read relevant preprints to stay up-to-the-minute current with what their colleagues are working on and then also need to read the final published article to see what has changed and improved through peer review, does this not make the situation worse?

Of course, you can say that they don't have to read the preprints, but then why are we creating this system? And wouldn't scientists risk putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage if they don't have all the information their colleagues may have?

10. What are the expectations of data and reagent sharing for preprints?

Do preprint authors have a responsibility or requirement to make data and reagents available to others looking to reproduce and build on their work, as is the case for articles in most peer-reviewed journals? And if so, who is responsible for assuring compliance? Who is responsible when issues of plagiarism, data manipulation, fraud, or authorship disputes arise in relation to a preprint? Can preprints be retracted?

I think these are all important questions. I'm not saying that preprint servers don't have a legitimate or important role to play in scientific discourse and dissemination. I'm saying that I don't see enough attention paid to the pros and cons of various visions of how to use them.

We really want to know what you think about these questions, what you want from a publishing system, and how we can work with you to build the kinds of solutions that will work for everyone. We know that currently there are a few loud voices that are dominating the conversation around the preprint topic. But we are thinking broadly about the kinds of approaches that would serve science best, and we want to hear from everyone. So please chime in below or by email to crosstalk@cell.com.