Publication rate and citation counts for preprints released during the COVID-19 pandemic: the good, the bad and the ugly
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Background: Preprints are preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed. In December 2019, a novel coronavirus appeared in China, and since then, scientific production, including preprints, has drastically increased. In this study, we intend to evaluate how often preprints about COVID-19 were published in scholarly journals and cited. Methods: We searched the iSearch COVID-19 portfolio to identify all preprints related to COVID-19 posted on bioRxiv, medRxiv, and Research Square from January 1, 2020, to May 31, 2020. We used a custom-designed program to obtain metadata using the Crossref public API. After that, we determined the publication rate and made comparisons based on citation counts using non-parametric methods. Also, we compared the publication rate, citation counts, and time interval from posting on a preprint server to publication in a scholarly journal among the three different preprint servers. Results: Our sample included 5,061 preprints, out of which 288 were published in scholarly journals and 4,773 remained unpublished (publication rate of 5.7%). We found that articles published in scholarly journals had a significantly higher total citation count than unpublished preprints within our sample ( p < 0.001), and that preprints that were eventually published had a higher citation count as preprints when compared to unpublished preprints ( p < 0.001). As well, we found that published preprints had a significantly higher citation count after publication in a scholarly journal compared to as a preprint ( p < 0.001). Our results also show that medRxiv had the highest publication rate, while bioRxiv had the highest citation count and shortest time interval from posting on a preprint server to publication in a scholarly journal. Conclusions: We found a remarkably low publication rate for preprints within our sample, despite accelerated time to publication by multiple scholarly journals. These findings could be partially attributed to the unprecedented surge in scientific production observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which might saturate reviewing and editing processes in scholarly journals. However, our findings show that preprints had a significantly lower scientific impact, which might suggest that some preprints have lower quality and will not be able to endure peer-reviewing processes to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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One study has reviewed publication rates and citations for covid-19 research but it primarily deals with basic science research and so its findings might not apply to covid-19 clinical trials.
“One study has reviewed publication rates and citations for covid-19 research but it primarily deals with basic science research and so its findings might not apply to covid-19 clinical trials.”
From Consistency of covid-19 trial preprints with published reports and impact for decision making: retrospective review (2022) · cites this paper as [46]
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Flagged first, then by citations
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“Of 5,061 articles posted on bioRxiv, medRxiv, and Research Square from January to May 2020, only 6% were published as of August 2020; time from preprint posting to publication was 0–117 days (median 24) (6).”
BackgroundInfluentialTuroman, N., Heyard, R., Schwab, S., Furrer, E., Vergauwe, E., & Held, L. (2022) · doi:10.31222/osf.io/nb928
Menshawey, R., Menshawey, E., & Massoud, M. (2022) · medRxiv · doi:10.1101/2022.10.25.22281523
Indian COVID-19 Preprints Submissions in bioRxiv and medRxiv Preprint ServersPreprint
Raju, N. V., Adakawa, M. I., Harinarayana, N. S., & Chandrappa (2023) · medRxiv · doi:10.1101/2023.02.14.23285870
“…to share relevant information following the promulgation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICMJE), WHO, and many scholarly journals urging authors to share their research findings to preprint servers prior to undergoing formal peer-review process (Añazco et al., 2021).”
BackgroundInfluentialKahveci, A., Gümüştepe, A., Güven, N., Sunar, İ., & Ataman, Ş. (2023) · Archives of Rheumatology · doi:10.46497/archrheumatol.2023.9957
Evaluating and Improving the Peer Review Process
Bennett, M. (2023) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-981-19-9240-7_4
Fasulo, S. M., Wilde, K. D., Kalahasti, K., Dhillon, J., Mulcahey, M. K., Scillia, A. J., & Kraeutler, M. J. (2023) · Arthroscopy Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation · doi:10.1016/j.asmr.2023.100765
“most up-to-date information related to the novel coronavirus.(3,4) Not only was there an increase in COVID-19-focused research, but there was a surge in general orthopaedic and subspecialty-focused research, as orthopaedic surgeons were displaced from the operating room.”
Turoman, N., Heyard, R., Schwab, S., Furrer, E., Vergauwe, E., & Held, L. (2024) · F1000Research · doi:10.12688/f1000research.129814.2
Preprints Are Here to Stay: Is That Good for Science?
Stojanovski, J., & Marušić, A. (2024) · Springer international handbooks of education · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-54144-5_145
Turoman, N., Heyard, R., Schwab, S., Furrer, E., Vergauwe, E., & Held, L. (2024) · F1000Research · doi:10.12688/f1000research.129814.3
Partially or fully (“silently”) withdrawn or retracted Center for Open Science preprints
da Silva, J. A. T. (2024) · Central Asian Journal of Medical Hypotheses and Ethics · doi:10.47316/cajmhe.2024.5.4.05
Challenges of modern universities and redefining educational paradigms in the age of globalization
Krasulja, N., Vasiljević-Blagojević, M., & Radojević, I. (2024) · Zbornik radova Pedagoskog fakulteta Uzice · doi:10.5937/zrpfu2426101k
The World of Academic Preprints: Promises and Pitfalls
Dutta, D., Kumar, M., & Sharma, M. (2025) · International Journal of Advanced Medical and Health Research · doi:10.4103/ijamr.ijamr_60_25
Additional file 1 of COVID-19-Related manuscripts: lag from preprint to publication
Drzymalla, E., Yu, W., Khoury, M. J., & GWINN, M. L. (2022) · Figshare · doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.21510325
A Critical Overview of the COVID-19 Pandemic Response, Preparedness, and Management in Ecuador
Terán, E., Ortiz‐Prado, E., Guillemot, J., & Vasconez, E. (2026) · Collaborative bioethics · doi:10.1007/978-3-032-21218-4_16
Li, Z., Zong, Q., Lin, L., Xu, H., & Shi, X. (2026) · Journal of Information Science · doi:10.1177/01655515261478908
Cardiovascular medicine preprints: publication rates, citation rates, and time to publication
Nicolalde, B., Camacho, J., Zambrano, K., Castillo, K., Rosoph, L., Sewalem, Z. W., Caputi, A., & Vélez, M. (2026) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-026-05859-9
Self-citation
- Authors
- Añazco, D., Nicolalde, B., Espinosa, I., Camacho, J., Mushtaq, M., Gimenez, J., & Teran, E.
- Affiliations
- Universidad San Francisco de Quito (EC)
- Colegio de Ciencias e Ingenieria, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
- Colegio de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
- Venue
- PeerJ
- Publisher
- PeerJ
- Published
- 2021-03-03
- Volume
- 9
- Pages
- e10927
- ISSN
- 2167-8359 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7936563
- OpenAlex
- W3134770594
- Cited by
- 63
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 11
- FWCI
- 12.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PeerJ (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Square (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Greater South Information System
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- preprints, COVID-19 pandemic, publication rates, citation counts, preprint servers, bioRxiv, medRxiv, Research Square, time to publication, scientific journals, peer review, scientific impact
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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