Why the Ecology Letters editorial board should reconsider its No vote on preprints | Jabberwocky Ecology | The Weecology Blog

As I’ve argued here, and in PLOS Biology, preprints are important. They accelerate the scientific dialog, improve the quality of published research, and provide both a fair mechanism for establishing precedence and an opportunity for early-career researchers to quickly demonstrate the importance of their research. And I’m certainly not the only one who thinks this ... One of the things slowing the use of preprints in ecology is the fact that some journals still have policies against considering manuscripts that have been posted as preprints. The argument is typically based on the Ingelfinger rule, which prohibits publishing the same original research in multiple journals. However, almost no one actually believes that this rule applies to preprints anymore. Science, Nature, PNAS, the Ecological Society of America, the British Ecological Society, the Royal Society, Springer, Wiley, and Elsevier all generally allow the posting of preprints. In fact, there is only one major journal in ecology that does not consider manuscripts that are posted as preprints: Ecology Letters.  I’ve been corresponding with the Editor in Chief of Ecology Letters for some time now attempting to convince the journal to address their outdated approach to preprints. He kindly asked the editorial board to vote on this last fall and has been nice enough to both share the results and allow me to blog about them.  Sadly, the editorial board voted 2:1 to not allow consideration of manuscripts posted as preprints based primarily on the following reasons ...  [1] Authors might release results before they have been adequately reviewed and considered. In particular the editors were concerned that 'early career authors might do this'. [2] Because Ecology Letters is considered to be a quick turnaround journal the need for preprints is lessened I’d like to take this opportunity to explain to the members of the editorial board why these arguments are not valid and why it should reconsider its vote ..."