Preprints have seen their profile rise, especially in the medical field, due to the rapidly evolving scientific landscape created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike published articles – which undergo rigorous peer review but are often subject to a long lag time between submission, acceptance, and publication – preprints are posted online without peer review. Thus, preprints allow researchers to get earlier access to new data without subscriptions or paywalls (although they should keep in mind that the information in these publications is subject to change) and provide authors with public feedback and collaboration opportunities. Many but not all preprints later appear in a journal.
Preprints also offer a window into the work of our Einstein/Montefiore community. You can check out the latest publications from our researchers on Einstein’s preprint channel, which draws from the preprint servers medRxiv and bioRxiv. If you are interested in other types of reports on recent publications by our faculty and physicians, our librarians can advise you on potential options.
For more sources of preprints, you can find them in several major biomedical databases, including Embase, PubMed, and Web of Science.
In November 2021, Embase started including articles that were originally posted on medRxiv and bioRxiv. Relevant preprints will now show up in the results for any search and there is a new “Preprint” option under “Publication type” in the filters on both the left-hand side of the screen and under the search bar itself. You can also restrict results to articles drawn from medRxiv and/or bioRXiv by selecting them in the “Journals” filter.
In addition, the National Library of Medicine makes preprints available through PubMed. This is part of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) pilot, launched in June 2020, which indexed preprints for COVID-19-related research funded by the NIH in PubMed Central (PMC) to make it more accessible and easier to find.
Earlier this year, NIH decided to extend the pilot beyond COVID-19. Phase two, which started in January 2023, includes preprints on all research that:
PubMed draws not just from medRxiv and bioRXiv but also from arXiv and Research Square. If you are interested in learning more about the pilot, you can do so on the PMC website.
To limit your search results on preprints in PubMed, you can use the “Article type” filter (which is found under “Additional filters”) or add “preprint[pt]” to your search.
Last but not least, you can find preprints in Web of Science (Clarivate). Einstein recently acquired a subscription to the Preprint Citation Index, which is a multidisciplinary collection of preprints drawn from multiple major preprint repositories, including arXiv, bioRxiv, chemRxiv, medRxiv and preprints.org.
Preprints can be easily identified within a Web of Science record thanks to an icon and explanatory text and the preprint database is updated daily.
However, it is important to note that preprint citations on Web of Science are not included in Times Cited counts, Journal Impact Factor, or any other citation metrics within the Web of Science Core Collection or Journal Citation Reports.
You can learn more about preprints and how to find them in different databases in our previous newsletters from February 2022, February 2023, and April 2023.
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