Sciety and the Rise of the Overlay Service

Abstract

Recent global events have given rise to explosive growth in preprint deposition. With the subsequent response from volunteers willing to evaluate the increased volume and with software development to connect the pipeline, is there a realistic way forward for a “publish first” model of publication? Preprinting in the Biomedical and Life Sciences Preprinting in general is not a new concept. Briefly, it entails an author or authors depositing an early version of their scientific manuscript to a public server as soon as they deem it ready, thereby disseminating the results to the widest possible audience earlier than would often be achievable, for example, by waiting for publication in a journal. There are many well documented advantages to preprinting for both the authors and readers of scientific publications.1 Authors retain control over when and where their manuscript is available, along with any priority claim to the reported results, while readers are rewarded with free and immediate access to the latest developments in their field. Furthermore, posting a preprint ahead of journal submission has been shown to increase the number of subsequent citations.2 Indeed, the notion of preprinting as a practice is gathering momentum, even within the biomedical and life science fields for which it is a relatively recent phenomenon. It will perhaps be news to no one that in recent years the number of biomedical preprints posted has steadily risen to finally reach a peak in response to the threat from COVID-19 (Figure 1). While the preprint format arguably represents a […]