Suchergebnisse

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became much more important for many researchers in the life science to disseminate preliminary versions of their results from one day to the next. This kind of "saving the world" feeling led to a search for ways to circumvent the lengthy publication procedures for journal articles, and many researchers decided to post preprints as an upstream publication option. This was a new phenomenon in the life sciences, so it is interesting to study this development and find out whether this is a temporary phenomenon or the beginning of a cultural change in publishing behavior in the life sciences. To gain initial insights into this, we conducted a quantitative survey of authors of COVID-19 related preprints in September 2022. The 25 survey questions were grouped into five parts: a) experiences with posting preprints during the COVID-19 pandemic, b) motivations for posting preprints, c) concerns about posting preprints, d) role of research institutions or research funders and e) future development. The survey contained single- and multiple-choice questions. We received 1,131 completed responses (response rate: 4.9%) from researchers who posted preprints on COVID-19 on the selected preprint servers bioRxiv, medRxiv and Research Square. Preliminary findings suggest that the large prevalence of preprints in the pandemic may lead to a lasting change in publishing behavior.

Purpose: The recent proliferation of preprints could be a way for researchers worldwide to increase the availability and visibility of their research findings. Against the background of rising publication costs caused by the increasing prevalence of article processing fees, the search for other ways to publish research results besides traditional journal publication may increase. This could be especially true for lower-income countries. Design/methodology/approach: Therefore, the authors are interested in the experiences and attitudes towards posting and using preprints in the Global South as opposed to the Global North. To explore whether motivations and concerns about posting preprints differ, the authors adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative survey of researchers with focus group interviews. Findings: The authors found that respondents from the Global South were more likely to agree to adhere to policies and to emphasise that mandates could change publishing behaviour towards open access. They were also more likely to agree posting preprints has a positive impact. Respondents from the Global South and the Global North emphasised the importance of peer-reviewed research for career advancement. Originality/value: The study has identified a wide range of experiences with and attitudes towards posting preprints among researchers in the Global South and the Global North. To the authors' knowledge, this has hardly been studied before, which is also because preprints only have emerged lately in many disciplines and countries.

Open Access (OA) facilitates access to research articles. However, authors or funders often must pay the publishing costs, preventing authors who do not receive financial support from participating in OA publishing and gaining citation advantage for OA articles. OA may exacerbate existing inequalities in the publication system rather than overcome them. To investigate this, we studied 522,411 articles published by Springer Nature. Employing correlation and regression analyses, we describe the relationship between authors affiliated with countries from different income levels, their choice of publishing model, and the citation impact of their papers. A machine learning classification method helped us to explore the importance of different features in predicting the publishing model. The results show that authors eligible for article processing charge (APC) waivers publish more in gold OA journals than others. In contrast, authors eligible for an APC discount have the lowest ratio of OA publications, leading to the assumption that this discount insufficiently motivates authors to publish in gold OA journals. We found a strong correlation between the journal rank and the publishing model in gold OA journals, whereas the OA option is mostly avoided in hybrid journals. Also, results show that the countries' income level, seniority, and experience with OA publications are the most predictive factors for OA publishing in hybrid journals.