NIH is initiating a second phase of its Preprints Pilot Program, with the intention of understanding the role of preprints in communicating the breadth of NIH-funded research.
NIH has previously defined preprints as “complete and public draft of a scientific document. Preprints are often intended to be submitted to journals for peer-review and subsequent publication. However, they are public and permanent in a way that journal submissions under review are not.”1
While preprints have existed for years, the need for accelerated access to biomedical research results during the COVID pandemic increased the demand by scientists. As a result, in 2020 NIH’s National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched phase 1 of its NIH Preprint Pilot, which tested the viability of making preprints searchable in PubMed Central and discoverable in PubMed, starting with COVID-19 preprints reporting NIH-supported research. The preprints were posted to participating preprint servers.
For investigators, the benefits of preprints include faster dissemination, establishing priority of their discoveries, and obtaining feedback. The scientific community benefits from preprints include acceleration of discoveries and maximizing the impact of funded research, in this case, NIH-funded research. In many ways, the scientific community’s benefits from preprints mirror those of the new NIH Data Management Sharing Policy – accelerating biomedical research discovery, partly by enabling validation of research results, providing accessibility to high-value datasets, and promoting data reuse for future research studies.2
This second phase of the PreprintsPilot Program will include all preprints reporting on NIH-funded research posted to an eligible preprint server on or after January 1, 2023.
In this phase, NIH will include peer review status and justification of why a preprint is included in NLM literature resources. NIH is also exploring how to present versions of preprints, and reviewing filter options to support different searches. Additionally, NIH continues to develop the Librarian Toolkit.
Required and recommended criteria for Phase 2 preprints are:
- The preprint must be posted to a participating preprint server: bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, or Research Square.
- Preprints must clearly acknowledge direct NIH support or have an NIH-affiliated author.
- NIH encourages investigators to select a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license or dedicate their work to the public domain.
- New preprint records are identified by NLM staff and added to PMC weekly. However, it may take up to two weeks for a preprint to be added to PMC and PubMed.
- Preprints can be reported to NIH as products of an award.
Complete details about Phase 2 can be found here: https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2023/02/08/nih-preprint-pilot-expands-to-include-preprints-across-nih-funded-research/
