Letter to the Editor: Response to AMWA-EMWA-ISMPP Statement on Preprints

In a letter to the editor published in Current Medical Research and Opinion, Richard Sever of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory responds to preprint citation and indexing recommendations in the  AMWA-EMWA-ISMPP Joint Position Statement on Medical Publications, Preprints, and Peer Review from March 2021. In his letter, Sever mentions his concerns over details within the report that he believes to be erroneous, mentioning that they may’ve skewed recommendations.

He writes, “The authors say that preprints are often not indexed by mainstream bibliographic services. This is not correct. Biomedical preprints are in fact indexed by arguably the most popular indexing service, Google Scholar, as well as other initiatives such as Scopus, Meta, and Europe PubMed Central (as the authors note). They also state that “only about a third to a half [of preprints] are ever fully published”. This is incorrect and not supported by the references cited. Analyses of bioRxiv and arXiv have shown that around 70% of preprints end up in peer-reviewed journals after a two-year window to account for the time delay to publication.”

Read his entire letter by clicking here and find the editor’s response here.

(Source: Current Medical Research and Opinion, January 10^th, 2022)