"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).
@cyrilpedia My initial comment was meant to highlight the risk of confusion by readers (including professionals). In such cases, #preprints implicate non-reviewed manuscripts, whereas publication in crappy journals comes under the umbrella of reviewed manuscripts.
@bn I understand - for me, publication in predatory journals with bad peer review is worse than a preprint because it carries the imprimatur of "peer review". It won't fool a researcher in the filed, but a journalist, a doctor, or an immunologist reading a neuroscience paper might be taken in. Whereas with the preprint, your guard is up. And responsible science writers add a "this has not yet been peer reviewed" disclaimer
