Managing Information From Preprints: The Scholarly Record and the Public Need for Information (Especially During a Pandemic)

MODERATOR: Patricia K Baskin Executive Editor, Neurology Journals American Academy of Neurology Minneapolis, Minnesota SPEAKERS: John R Inglis Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor, New York Bruce T Rosenblum Inera Somerville, Massachusetts Iratxe Puebla ASAPBio San Francisco, California REPORTER: Tony Alves Hopedale, Massachusetts The session entitled “Managing Information from Preprints: The Scholarly Record and the Public Need for Information (Especially During a Pandemic)” was held on May 3, 2021 at the Council of Science Editors Annual Meeting. Moderated by Patty Baskin, Executive Editor of the Neurology® Journals, the session featured presentations from John Inglis, Co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv, and Executive Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; Iratxe Puebla, Associate Director of ASAPbio; and Bruce Rosenblum, Vice President of Content and Workflow Solutions at Inera, an Atypon Company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the usage and popularity of preprint servers has grown. Preprints have been common in disciplines such as physics, astronomy, and mathematics for decades, via the arXiv1 preprint server, but they are a somewhat new phenomenon in biology and medicine. Preprints allow for an early look at new research, often before authors submit their manuscripts to scholarly journals for evaluation and peer review. Because readers have access to research before it is peer reviewed, confusion and misconceptions around preprints may arise, particularly among the general public. John Inglis presented first and provided a comprehensive overview of how preprints are transforming research communications, using bioRxiv2 and medRxiv3 from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) as examples. Inglis spoke of […]