VeriXiv preprint server helps ensure the quality and integrity of preprint

Preprints, or initial versions of scientific reports that researchers share before the formal peer review and publication process have been completed, have started to become more popular within academic circles—and now the Gates Foundation has changed its Open Access policy to require grant-funded research papers to appear as preprints before publication.

“We’re focused on getting access to early results and data as quickly as possible, ensuring that information is rapidly available to researchers and the general public,” said Ashley Farley, who leads the Gates Foundation’s Open Access team.

This change will affect thousands of researchers and could have a ripple effect on the scientific community overall, making preprints a more widely adopted practice. The Gates Foundation supports about 1,700 grant projects each year, resulting in some 4,500 articles annually.

Most of the Gates Foundation’s giving supports STEM-related projects, but it does fund some social science and humanities projects. Global health and development are the foundation’s biggest areas of giving, followed by agriculture, nutrition, maternal health, and child equity.

Disseminating research results as quickly as possible is critical in fields such as global health, where the timeliness of new information can help save lives. The peer review and publishing process can take anywhere from a few months to a few years to complete.

Addressing concerns

Farley characterized preprints as “still new and nascent” in most disciplines outside of global health. She estimated that only 10 to 15 percent of research outputs funded by the Gates Foundation were published in preprint format before the policy change.

“There are a lot of myths and fears around preprinting,” she said. “I’m surprised at the number of authors who think journals won’t accept or review their paper if it’s been preprinted. I think that’s still a big fear among the research community,” though it has proven to be unfounded.

There are sometimes concerns about the quality and integrity of information published to a preprint server before it’s formally peer reviewed. But Farley said a growing body of research suggests that “we can put more trust in the nature of preprints.” She added: “We’re not seeing a lot of harm coming from the early sharing of research information.”

COVID-19 provided a test case for the integrity of the preprint process, she said, as researchers were racing to develop treatments and vaccines to slow the spread of the pandemic.

“It was a time when we really needed information to move quickly, but there were also concerns about misinformation and following the wrong path,” Farley said. Studies examining the differences between information published in preprint format and the final versions of this research appearing in peer-reviewed journals did not reveal significant differences in the conclusions. “These studies added to our comfortability of going all in on a preprint-forward policy,” she noted.

VeriXiv (pronounced “veri-kive”), a new generation of preprint server launched in collaboration with the Gates Foundation by F1000, uses both technology and human reviewers to perform a series of rigorous, pre-publication checks to support the integrity of research.

VeriXiv “leverages technology in a cohesive way,” Farley said, “balancing what’s automated and what’s curated by a human so that readers can tell what has already been checked when they look at an article.” This type of rigorous review “isn’t happening in many other preprint servers now.”

Equity as well as expediency

Expediency isn’t the only goal behind the Gates Foundation’s policy changes. “The new rules also help us tackle equity more effectively,” Farley noted.

Open-access journals typically charge researchers what are known as “article processing charges” (APCs) to cover the costs of editing, peer reviewing, hosting, and preserving articles. However, APCs can result in a significant financial burden for researchers, one that may prohibit the open sharing of information.

Although the Gates Foundation used to pay APCs for the publication of Gates-funded research, the foundation is now ending this practice.

“This allows us to spend our money differently, because we’re not requiring that the journal version of record be made open access,” Farley explained. Instead, researchers can satisfy the foundation’s Open Access requirements by sharing preprints openly with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or an equivalent license that permits any user to copy, redistribute, transform, and build on the material for any purpose.

VeriXiv has been built to support Gates Foundation grantees to comply with the foundation’s Open Access Policy. Once a preprint has been published on VeriXiv, the author has the option to submit their research to any peer reviewed journal, or continue the peer review process through VeriXiv and publish on Gates Open Research.

“VeriXiv offers grantees an easy, trusted way to comply with the new policy,” Farley concluded. “It’s not a requirement; researchers can publish with other preprint servers.” Those who are already taking advantage of preprints might want to continue using services they’re comfortable with, she said—but for those who aren’t, “we thought it was really important to have another option.”
 

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