Researchers Familiarity and Use of Preprint Servers

,


OBJECTIVE AND METHODOLOGY
The objective of the study is to assess the familiarity and the use of preprint servers by researchers to share their work.Data collection was conducted by Wiley through an online survey in May and June 2020.1,045 respondents completed at least 40% or more of the survey questions.
KEY FINDINGS 44% of survey respondents (out of a total of 1,905) indicated they are not at all familiar with preprint servers.
Most respondents who indicated they are familiar with preprint servers have submitted a manuscript to be published in a journal in the last three years (83%).
Level of education has a major impact on whether respondents read research on preprint servers.More than 60% of post-doctoral fellows access preprint servers to read the research work uploaded by other researchers, compared to only 33% undergraduate students.
Only 56% of researchers who access servers to read documents posted by their peers use preprint servers to upload their own research outputs.
55% of respondents indicated that they have never uploaded any research outputs on preprint servers.
Most of the researchers surveyed indicated multiple reasons to upload their research on a preprint server.The most popular reasons were to get feedback on their work (46%) and for faster dissemination of their research (45%).
Over 40% of respondents that have never uploaded any research to a server indicated that they are not familiar with the functions of servers and nearly 30% of researchers do not find any benefit from uploading research output on preprint servers.

DISCUSSION
The COVID-19 pandemic is driving awareness of preprint servers among the scientific community.Preprints are being discussed more than ever before.This study and our key findings show that there is a need to share the benefits of preprints and to explain to researchers how servers work.
Preprint servers offer fast dissemination of research.They allow researchers to share preliminary results and receive peer feedback ahead of formal publication.Servers also provide researchers with an opportunity to build up their scholarly record and to timestamp their work to establish priority.
Preprints accelerate the discovery of research.They are rapidly becoming more widely integrated into the scholarly publishing ecosystem.At Wiley we believe preprints work better with publishers and journals involved, and that preprints will continue to complement traditional journal publishing, adding speed, openness, and faster feedback for researchers.Journals should allow for the submission of manuscripts which have already been made available on a server.We encourage researchers who reference preprints (like other peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources) to continue to cite these sources accurately.
The journals Wiley publishes have policies designed to suit the research communities they serve.
Given the increase in the number of servers we recommend using a directory such as ASAPbio Preprint Server Directory (https://asapbio.org/preprint-servers(https://asapbio.org/preprint-servers)) to check their disciplinary scope and compare their governance, licensing, archiving strategies and the nature of any screening checks.The Earth and Space Science Open Archive -ESSOAr (https://www.essoar.org/(https://www.essoar.org/)) is a community server for the Earth, space, and environmental sciences.