What's Wrong With How We Talk About Preprints? | Absolutely Maybe

by Hilda Bastian

“When you see the term ‘preprint’ in a scientific news article, what do you interpret it to mean?”

That’s the key question Alice Fleerackers and colleagues posed to their study participants (2024). There were 864 of them, recruited from a US research service. There was also a group of university students, but I’m not discussing that sample in this post.

Around half of the participants from the general population had a degree, or some tertiary education. They had been randomized to read a news article about a piece of research from a preprint server that either disclosed it was based on a preprint (with an explanation of what this meant), or did not mention its status.

After coding the participants’ answers, the researchers concluded that only 10% of them were technically accurate. Those who had read the versions including an explanation that the research came from an un-peer-reviewed preprint that wasn’t published in a journal “were no more likely to provide a technically accurate” answer. (All they had to say to score a “technically accurate” rating was that the work hadn’t been peer-reviewed and/or that wasn’t from a journal.)

I think the most worrisome part of their findings comes from the misunderstandings. The proportion of people who either didn’t answer, or answered that they didn’t know, was only around 10%. So the overwhelming majority of the group misunderstood the term, sometimes dramatically. Misunderstandings derived in part from the word “preprint” itself, in part from the short explanation, and in part because of misunderstandings about journals and peer review.

[...]