Practices, drivers and impediments in the use of preprints (Phase 1 report)

The preprints landscape is evolving rapidly, and the full impact of sharing articles in pre-review form remains to be seen. Our interest in Open Access and Open Scholarship led us to issue an initial report on ‘The evolving preprint landscape' in 2018, and we are now able to share the first output of our next stage of work in this exciting field – a slide deck detailing our findings on the practices, drivers and impediments in the use of preprints.

Preprints have become more widespread in a number of disciplines over the last few years, partly to counter the slow pace of the traditional publishing process and partly to allow authors to reach a broader audience. Knowledge Exchange, in collaboration with Research Consulting, has been exploring stakeholder views on this topic, focusing in particular on:

• the use of preprints by researchers;
• the core benefits of using preprints for researchers;
• the incentives and disincentives of using preprints for researchers;
• the attitudes towards preprints by institutions and funders; and
• the values, strategies and aims of preprint service providers.

In this context, we interviewed 38 stakeholders, including researchers, research performing organisations, research funding organisations and preprint service providers, and reviewed over 60 literature sources.

These slides are an interim output of the research led by our Task & Finish group on preprints. We will continue to investigate the area until September 2019, when we plan to release a more detailed report unpicking the evidence gathered.