- You should be sceptical regardless. In fact preprints promote best practices in how to read a scientific manuscript, i.e. don't take everything you read as proven fact.
- If you publish rubbish everyone sees it with your name on it
- Good to encourage skepticism, particularly if peer review isn’t working
Number of authors - suspicious if see one only.
- preprint servers have QCs and screening: “if we publish this, could it cause harm?” - we haven’t yet worked it out for clinical science. BioRXiv have scientists screening “is this science?”
- Similar situation to grad students going rogue
Clin sci - medrxiv just launched, expect a more stringent process, journals not yet ready for it
Is there a use of multiple servers?
- immaturity of situation, different features
- Depends on subject area
Can you publish negative findings?
- yes
- BioRXiv have section for contradictory findings and confirmatory findings as well as standard novel
Is there a standard for preprints? ASAPbio are trying to establish standard. Matters to funders as need to know directory of reputable preprint servers.
Cell press sneak peek preview - bad behaviour, a (free) subscription journal club on mendeley. Do funders want to know if preprints are open.
Advantage of preprints = rapid feedback but who reads them?
Word of mouth recommendations
There are subject lists by email
Twitter is huge
Impact of preprints - data of downloads as preprints versus impact of paper yet
PLoS genetics know have preprint editors, turns it into marketplace
You could tweet with a good video, etc versus asking others to tweet
- if you have a result you’re proud of, certainly shout about it
- If it’s less exciting, maybe choose to prioritise elsewhere
OA nature of preprints, why pay to publish OA?
- Researcher evaluation
- Publisher adds value with VOR
- Funder policy is that you need to pay for OA
- You should be asking for transparency in costs
- Wellcome open research is an alternative
- Do we need journals if future is that preprints + peer review - do we need a journal to put a stamp on it?
- Room seemed to like idea of preprint as marketplace for journals