Abstract
While early commenting on studies is seen as one of the advantages of preprints, the nature of such comments, and the people who post them, have not been systematically explored. We analysed comments posted between 21 May 2015 and 9 September 2019 for 1,983 bioRxiv preprints that received only one comment. Sixty-nine percent of comments were posted by non-authors (n=1,366), and 31% by preprint authors (n=617). Twelve percent of non-author comments (n=168) were full review reports traditionally found during journal review, while the rest most commonly contained praises (n=577, 42%), suggestions (n=399, 29%), or criticisms (n=226, 17%). Authors’ comments most commonly contained publication status updates (n=354, 57%), additional study information (n=158, 26%), or solicited feedback for the preprints (n=65, 11%). Our study points to the value of preprint commenting, but further studies are needed to determine the role that comments play in shaping preprint versions and eventual journal publications.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Funding: Elsevier funding was awarded to Stanford University for a METRICS postdoc position that supported MM’s work on the project.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Ethics Approval: No ethics approval was needed as we analysed publicly available data.
Reporting: This study is reported using the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines.
Data Availability: All data are available on our projects website.
