The perils of preprints
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The medical community has been cautious regarding the adoption of preprints.
“the medical community has been cautious regarding their adoption.15 16”
From Consistency of covid-19 trial preprints with published reports and impact for decision making: retrospective review (2022) · cites this paper as [15]
Preprints might result in the dissemination of provisional findings that contain important errors that, presumably, published papers do not.
“preprints might result in the dissemination of provisional findings that contain important errors that, presumably, published papers do not”
From Consistency of covid-19 trial preprints with published reports and impact for decision making: retrospective review (2022) · cites this paper as [15]
Cites
A nicotinic hypothesis for Covid-19 with preventive and therapeutic implications
Changeux, J., Amoura, Z., Rey, F. A., & Miyara, M. (2020) · Comptes Rendus Biologies · doi:10.5802/crbiol.8 · Cited by 302 · see citing works
The Policy Dystopia Model: An Interpretive Analysis of Tobacco Industry Political Activity
Ulucanlar, S., Fooks, G. J., & Gilmore, A. B. (2016) · PLOS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002125 · Cited by 252 · see citing works
Self-citationEarly in the epidemic: impact of preprints on global discourse about COVID-19 transmissibility
Majumder, M. S., & Mandl, K. D. (2020) · The Lancet Global Health · doi:10.1016/s2214-109x(20)30113-3 · Cited by 192 · see citing works
Preprints for the life sciences
Berg, J. M., Bhalla, N., Bourne, P. E., Chalfie, M., Drubin, D. G., Fraser, J. S., Greider, C. W., Hendricks, M., Jones, C., Kiley, R., et al. (2016) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aaf9133 · Cited by 178 · see citing works
A Question Of Intent: A Great American Battle With A Deadly Industry
Kessler, D. A. (2001) · Cited by 110 · see citing works
Low rate of daily active tobacco smoking in patients with symptomatic COVID-19Preprint
Miyara, M., Tubach, F., Pourcher, V., Morélot‐Panzini, C., Pernet, J., Haroche, J., Lebbah, S., Morawiec, É., Gorochov, G., Caumes, É., et al. (2020) · Qeios · doi:10.32388/wpp19w.4 · Cited by 99 · see citing works
Rise of the Rxivs: How Preprint Servers are Changing the Publishing Process
Hoy, M. B. (2020) · Medical Reference Services Quarterly · doi:10.1080/02763869.2020.1704597 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
Tressoldi, P. E. (2011) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00117 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
New preprint server for medical research
Rawlinson, C., & Bloom, T. (2019) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.l2301 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
A nicotinic hypothesis for Covid-19 with preventive and therapeutic implicationsPreprint
Changeux, J., Amoura, Z., Rey, F. A., & Miyara, M. (2020) · doi:10.32388/fxgqsb.2 · Cited by 61 · see citing works
Ginsparg, P. (2016) · The EMBO Journal · doi:10.15252/embj.201695531 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Medical Preprints—A Debate Worth Having
Maslove, D. M. (2018) · JAMA · doi:10.1001/jama.2017.17566 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Low incidence of daily active tobacco smoking in patients with symptomatic COVID-19Preprint
Miyara, M., Tubach, F., Pourcher, V., Morélot‐Panzini, C., Pernet, J., Haroche, J., Lebbah, S., Morawiec, É., Gorochov, G., Caumes, É., et al. (2020) · Qeios · doi:10.32388/wpp19w.2 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
Smith, E. A. (2006) · European Journal of Public Health · doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckl097 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Preprints in medical research: Progress and principles
Peiperl, L., & Editors, O. B. O. T. P. M. (2018) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002563 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Zeraatkar, D., Pitre, T., Leung, G., Cusano, E., Agarwal, A., Khalid, F., Escamilla, Z., Cooper, M. A., Ghadimi, M., Wang, Y., et al. (2022) · BMJ Medicine · doi:10.1136/bmjmed-2022-000309 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Davidson, M., Evrenoglou, T., Graña, C., Chaimani, A., & Boutron, I. (2024) · BMC Medical Research Methodology · doi:10.1186/s12874-023-02136-8 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
- Authors
- van Schalkwyk, M. C. I., Hird, T. R., Maani, N., Petticrew, M., & Gilmore, A. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Bath (GB)
- Boston University (US)
- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (GB)
- Venue
- BMJ
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2020-08-17
- Volume
- 370
- Pages
- m3111
- ISSN
- 1756-1833 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3049295669
- Cited by
- 38
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 2
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.bmj.com/company/legal-information/terms-conditions/legal-information/tdm-licencepolicy (tdm)
- Locations
- BMJ (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR300156)
- Medical Research Council (MR/S037519/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Keywords
- preprints, preprint servers, scholarly publishing, research dissemination, peer review
- MeSH terms
- Betacoronavirus, Preprints as Topic, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Humans, Pneumonia, Viral, Smoking, Scientific Misconduct, Conflict of Interest, Coronavirus Infections, Editorial Policies, Pandemics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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