Changing Preprint Policies at Neuroscience Journals
Hilary Spencer
Friday, 20 February 2009 20:57 UTC
The Journal of Neuroscience has just announced a change to their policy permitting the distribution of preprint manuscripts via repositories like Nature Precedings. John Maunsell writes in this week’s editorial:
“[T]he posting of unpublished manuscripts is in many ways similar to the presentation of unpublished work at meetings, except that it allows a much more detailed commentary from a much wider audience. Thus, a policy of disallowing prepublished manuscripts can inhibit an open exchange and slow the progress of science… Recognizing that open exchange and discussion of ideas is important for the advancement of the field, The Journal of Neuroscience will now consider manuscripts that have been prepublished on the Internet, whether in prepublication repositories or elsewhere.”
Their official policy now states:
“The Journal of Neuroscience generally does not accept manuscripts that have been previously published. An exception is made for manuscripts that have been posted on the Internet for the purpose of receiving commentary from the community. Such posting is typically done at a pre-publication repository that has been designed for the purpose, but posting on an institutional web site or other Internet location is acceptable.”
This change comes after the editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology_, David Linden, issued an open letterthe.php arguing for a change in their policy and requesting feedback from the community. Dr. Linden writes:
“There is little reason to believe that a change of policy to allow preprint server manuscripts at Journal of Neurophysiology will have a negative impact on either the editorial function or the business model of the journal. Institutions are not going to cancel their JN subscriptions in favor of free preprint access. Journal of Neurophysiology should benefit from getting manuscripts that are better for having received more feedback prior to submission and from receiving submissions from authors who otherwise would avoid JN due to the prior publication policy… It is my view that changing the guidelines at Journal of Neurophysiology to allow for submission of preprint server manuscripts can only improve scientific communication and benefit the Journal.”
Individuals who support a change in the Journal of Neurophysiology’s policies are encouraged to vote by filling out a brief form (appended to the letter) and emailing it to jlane12 [a] jhmi.edu
Dr. Linden also names several publishers who already permit the posting of preprint manuscripts: Nature Publishing Group (Nature Neuroscience and Nature_), Elsevier (_Brain Research, Neuroscience, NeuroImage, Journal of Neurobiology, Hearing Research, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience_), Springer (_Journal of Computational Neuroscience, Neuroinformatics, Brian Structure and Function_), PLoS (PLoS Biology_), Frontiers (Frontiers in Neuroscience_); and several scientific societies including the Society for Neuroscience (_Journal of Neuroscience), the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). More journals who permit preprint archiving can be found via the SHERPA/RoMEO project
Of course, we here at Nature Precedings are delighted to hear this news. We believe that the neuroscience community as a whole will benefit from the open and rapid exchange of information.
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Replies
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“Institutions are not going to cancel their JN subscriptions in favor of free preprint access.”
No, but it will eliminate the journals’ ability to garner press by being the final gatekeeper between scientists and media / the public.
If this weren’t important, then why would Nature and other journals so jealously guard their embargoes on new papers? Doesn’t prepress make those embargoes in some sense irrelevant? Then why not drop them as well?
Just curious. Glad to see the general trend here and am appreciative that you posted on it.
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To clarify: the Nature journals encourage preprint posting, as Hilary mentions in her post.
Chris, the reasoning for the embargo policy is explained on our author and referee website, here. From that page:
“The Nature journals believe that their embargo serves scientists, authors, journalists and the public. Our policy is to release information about our content in a way that provides fair and equal access to the media, allowing it to provide informed comment based on the complete and final version of the paper that is to be published. Authors and their institutions’ press offices are able then to interact with the media ahead of publication, and benefit from the subsequent coverage.
The benefits of peer review as a means of giving journalists confidence in new work published in journals are self-evident. Premature release to the media denies journalists that confidence. It also removes journalists’ ability to obtain informed reactions about the work from independent researchers in the field."
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Hi Maxine,
Those are all great reasons to retain an embargo policy!
I guess what I’m wondering is: if these papers start showing up on preprint servers, what’s to stop them from getting coverage before they are peer-reviewed? Doesn’t that neutralize all the things that are good about an embargo policy?
Call me a cynic, but when you consider that a site composed entirely out of unadulterated press releases (ScienceDaily) is the #1 distributor of science news on the internet, in part precisely because of a press release / embargo culture (have you ever tried to race against a machine programmed to simply spit out the press release version of the story you’re working on, the instant the embargo lifts?) I can’t imagine that someone won’t start mining prepress servers for more ‘scoops.’
In other words, while I hope that no one would ever do this, I also used to think that people were smart enough to tell the difference between a press release and a news article that includes commentary by disinterested third parties. Turns out that either they can’t or, more charitably, that it doesn’t matter – that university press officers are now the default science journalists of our world.
I can guarantee that if prepress becomes commonplace, journalists will feel pressure to start reporting on research before it has been peer reviewed. Otherwise they’ll simply be scooped. Does that make sense?
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I think it is a legitimate concern. Read the last two paragraphs of this for my somewhat related thoughts. It is difficult to imagine journalists not taking advantage of this released information. To a certain degree they already do, with many freelancers and science writers beginning to attend conferences more often these days, and reporting on the proceedings. It will be important for news editors to clamp down and make sure that any stories covering preprint science are clearly prefaced with statements disclosing the fact that the work has not been peer-reviewed.
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That may be so. It will be interesting to see how things develop. In the astrophysics and astronomy community, for example, preprint servers have been going for years (I joined Nature in 1984 and they were well-established then). Some science journalists trawl these servers for stories, and write about them in popular science mags, etc. It does not inhibit the final papers, after peer-review and editing, being published in Nature (and probably other journals at other publishers) – the preprint servers are essentially there for scientists to read and comment on each others’ papers so they are refined before submission to a journal, and journals like Nature treat them accordingly.
What happens when scientists in every discipline posts on a perprint server, and science journalists regularly trawl the lot and write up what they find – is anyone’s guess.
The same applies to conferences and theses, as well. Good journalists can dig out stories from those sources ahead of formal publication.
My own feeling is that “quality will out”, but it is all a matter of opinion, nobody can predict the future.
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