The following research article was recently published by PLOS Biology.
Title
Authors
Nicholas Fraser
Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
Liam Brierley
University of Liverpool
Gautam Dey
UCL, London, UK
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Jessica K. Polka
ASAPbio
Máté Pálfy
The Company of Biologists
Federico Nanni
Alan Turing Institute
Jonathon Alexis Coates
University of Cambridge
William Harvey Research Institute
Queen Mary University of London
Source
PLoS Biol 19(4): e3000959
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000959
Abstract
The world continues to face a life-threatening viral pandemic. The virus underlying the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused over 98 million confirmed cases and 2.2 million deaths since January 2020. Although the most recent respiratory viral pandemic swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to current events has experienced a cultural shift in the interim. The scientific community has responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 125,000 COVID-19–related scientific articles within 10 months of the first confirmed case, of which more than 30,000 were hosted by preprint servers.
We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, 2 growing preprint servers for biomedical research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, as well as characteristics of their propagation on online platforms.
Comparison of the properties of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 preprints deposited on bioRxiv and medRxiv between January 1 and October 31, 2020 (Source: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000959.g002)
Our data provide evidence for increased scientific and public engagement with preprints related to COVID-19 (COVID-19 preprints are accessed more, cited more, and shared more on various online platforms than non-COVID-19 preprints), as well as changes in the use of preprints by journalists and policymakers. We also find evidence for changes in preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter and reviewed faster. Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in the dissemination of COVID-19 science and the impact of the pandemic on the scientific communication landscape.
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