Preprints in Industry-Sponsored Research: Opportunity or Liability?
For medical writers specializing in publications, particularly those working with industry sponsors, prepublication servers like medRxiv offer both opportunities and challenges. Read on to explore how preprints can fit into your publication strategy while balancing visibility, credibility, and regulatory and legal compliance.
BENEFITS
1. Open access: Prepublication servers, including medRxiv, are open access platforms, which means that your article will be freely available to anyone with an internet connection. This can help to increase the accessibility of your research and may lead to greater dissemination and impact.
2. Rapid dissemination: Posting to a prepublication server communicates research to the scientific community and public quickly. medRxiv quickly makes research publicly available, often within days of submission. During times when there are public health emergencies, posting on prepublication platforms is encouraged and can even be required, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Feedback and collaboration: Servers like medRxiv allows for public commenting, which means that you may receive feedback and suggestions from other researchers and stakeholders. This can help to improve the quality of your research and may lead to collaboration opportunities.
4. Preprint visibility: By submitting to prepublication servers like medRxiv, your preprint is not only visible to the public on the platform but is also discoverable by indexing services such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus, leading to increased visibility. Some types of publications are bettter suited to this format than others; study design manuscripts, for example, could help other investigators design their studies, increase study enrollment, and benefit patients who are researching new study enrollment opportunities.
5. Expedited journal review: Many journals encourage authors to post to prepublication servers like medRxiv and allow direct transfer from the server to the journal for review. The submission process is made faster because the relevant information has already been uploaded to the server. In fact, some journals have their own prepublication servers and provide authors with the option to post their manuscript in the process of submitting to the journal. Other journals are taking unique approaches to using these servers. The Lancet, for example, monitors medRxiv for relevant high-quality manuscripts and may invite authors to submit their preprints, and journals like PLOS and eLife have experimented with using public feedback to expedite the review process.
CONSIDERATIONS
1. Lack of peer review: Preprints are not peer reviewed before they are posted online. This means people in the scientific community with relevant expertise have not critically evaluated the article and “vetted” it. Feedback was not provided to authors with the sole purpose of improving the accuracy or clarity of the article so critical errors could be missed.
2. Persistence: Even if flaws in an article are identified and the article is never formally published, the article can remain online in perpetuity. There is a propensity for news outlets and online content creators to continue to erroneously quote these articles as “published” scientific works, which contributes to misinformation and public misunderstanding.
3. Intellectual property risk: When working on an industry-sponsored manuscript, be sure to ask the team to carefully consider whether making the information public before publication could jeopardize patent filings or risk their competitive advantage. Consultation with regulatory and legal teams is advised before posting to a prepublication server.
Prepublication servers provide open access, rapid dissemination, and increased visibility, allowing for early feedback while expediting journal submissions. However, medical writers and sponsors should carefully consider whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Understanding how preprints fit within a broader publication strategy can help medical writers balance visibility and credibility effectively.
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Pam Harvey, Director of Medical and Scientific Publications
