The prehistory of biology preprints: a forgotten experiment from the 1960s

Abstract

In 1961, the NIH began to circulate biological preprints in a forgotten experiment called the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs). This system eventually attracted over 3600 participants and saw the production of over 2,500 different documents, but by 1967 it was effectively shut down by journal publishers' refusal to accept articles that had been circulated as preprints. This article charts the rise and fall of the IEGs and explores the parallels with the 1990s and the biomedical preprint movement of today.

Technical and social issues influencing the adoption of preprints in the life sciences

“…However, given that many researchers continue to be evaluated based on the reputation of the journals where their work is published, authors are incentivised to 'aim high' when they select which journal to submit their manuscript to, and it can take several rounds of review (at a single or multiple journals) before the work is approved for publication. It is commonplace for a manuscript to have been submitted to at least two journals on its way to publication, and as a result the overall peer review process can take years (6). The sooner a piece of work can be read, evaluated, and built upon, the faster science moves.…”

“…Posting preprints is standard practice in many fields in physics, mathematics, computer science, economics, and other disciplines. Preprints are only now becoming widespread in the life sciences, despite a long history of sincere efforts to establish servers in biology by both public and private sectors dating back to the 1960s (6). Why have they taken off in biology only now?…”

“…In 1966, a cabal of journal editors "outlawed" Information Exchange Groups (the NIH's photocopy and mail-based preprint exchange platform), fearing that preprints would damage their business model (6). A representative of the American Association of Immunologists wrote that "Since the preprints are complete publications, there is a real danger that they will reduce the usefulness of existing journals in the field of Immunology and may ultimately supersede them.…”

Consultative review is worth the wait

“…In recent years, physicists introduced – or reintroduced ( Cobb, 2017 ) – biologists to the idea of preprints as a way to make their results available as quickly and as widely as possible, while also mitigating some of the pitfalls of peer review. It would be almost poetic if the life sciences could soon return the favor by introducing consultative peer review to the physical sciences and beyond.…”

On the potential of preprints in geochemistry: the good, the bad and the ugly

“…Also sometimes referred to as e-prints, they are digitally shared, non-peer-reviewed scholarly articles that typically precede publication in a peer-reviewed journal [3]. They have been a part of science since at least the 1960s [4]. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web to help researchers share knowledge easily.…”