"Preprints are a democratising force in science – you have the same opportunity to share your science regardless of whether you're at a small university in a developing country or at a high-profile institute in the USA. Preprints really open up and speed up the dissemination and sharing of research; they are not a one-stop solution to all the problems with science publishing, but are certainly a critical piece."
@cyrilpedia Certainly, some feel uncomfortable with the lack of peer review, which may lead to the publication of lower-quality papers. However, there are a lot of junk peer-reviewed journals also.
@bn I'm not a fan of the "there are already bad papers out there" defence here, better to examine the preprints on their own merits. So far I think the balance has been very positive - but it gets much more complicated when the readers are not scientists (and here I would include not only the public, journalists, etc but also many doctors and healthcare professionals). When we discussed this with Maria Leptin and others on the EMBO Podcast part of the reasoning was that people would not want to put their name on crappy manuscripts that are publicly posted - and others, like Prachee Avasthi, were saying they use the preprint feedback to improve the manuscript before journal submission (the more collegial the field, the more likely that this will be the case).
@bn I also think there is great research that for many different reasons will not easily be published and should not disappear - for example when a postdoc is scooped - that make great preprints for several reasons: for Science (capital S), these are often cutting edge, technically challenging observations that *need* replication for validation; the data can be incorporated into meta analysis; and for the postdoc, he can show the preprint when applying for a job - I think it holds a lot more water than just saying "I did this too, but I got scooped"
@cyrilpedia This is a perfect point for pre prints.