Introduction
Since the launch of bioRxiv in 2013, preprints have seen an explosion in use and adoption across the life sciences. Preprints now represent ~10% of the biomedical literature and are seeing increasing recognition across funding bodies, policy makers, academics and universities in promotion and hiring decisions. However, this adoption and recognition is not globally universal with large disparities existing not only between countries but sometimes even within the same institution.
Many institutions across the globe require the submission or publication of one or more journal articles before a PhD student can graduate. This contributes to an increasing amount of lower quality publications and other issues in the wider literature. It is also a practice that is often preyed upon by predatory publishers and special issue journals. For the individual students however, this requirement can have more personal impacts including increasing stress and uncertainty as graduation is delayed until manuscripts have completed the peer review process – which can take 6+ months. The use of publications as a requirement for graduation can also feed into the issues of journal impact factors or names being used as proxies for quality and may encourage some examiners to not scrutinise a thesis appropriately.
Institutional recognition of preprints has progressed more outside of graduation requirements. For example, many institutions in the US and EU accept preprints for fellowship applications and in job applications. However, this is still relatively rare outside of these geographical regions and even within these areas the adoption of preprints in this manner remains highly variable. To better understand the use of preprints and published articles as a requirement for graduation, we conducted a global survey of researchers. Although we received limited responses, the data provides an interesting insight into the current landscape and perceptions of publication requirements.
Survey demographics
The survey was translated to several languages to achieve a wider reach. We received a total of 81 responses from across the world. Over half (51.8%) of the survey respondents came from Spain, 8.6% from Chile, 7.4% from the United States, and 6.1% from Germany. The rest of the respondents represented less than 5% each from the countries listed in Fig 1A. Although this was a relatively limited response, it did cover a relatively wide geography.
Survey respondents represented individuals from diverse career stages (Fig 1B). The majority were principal investigators/group leaders (42.5%), followed by PhD students (23.7%) and postdocs (8.7%). Master level students represented 6.2% of the total respondents. Individuals were not necessarily working in academia, with some survey respondents working in industry; for example, as science writers (1.25%). As respondents were answering about their current institution requirements, PhD students, masters students and group leaders would be reasonably expected to have the most accurate awareness of the graduation requirements.
Survey respondents were primarily representing Biology (50.4%) and Medical and health sciences (33.9%) fields, although Chemistry was also relatively well represented (6.9%) (Fig 1C). Other fields included less than 3 respondents each. This is a positive response for our survey focus on life sciences but does limit the findings to these fields.
Results
All respondents were asked about their current interaction with preprints to gauge their understanding and use of preprints more generally. The majority actively read preprints with large numbers also posting and citing preprints. Fewer respondents posted reviews for preprints, representing an area that can be improved upon. Interestingly, more did engage in preprint discussions and journal clubs, suggesting that this may be a prime target for increasing preprint reviewing. A relatively large portion of respondents did not interact, or were not familiar with preprints (Fig 2).
We first asked about any requirements for graduation from masters programs (Fig 3). The overwhelming majority did not have any formal graduation requirements although a number did require manuscripts to be ready, submitted, accepted or published in a journal. Very few respondents stated that preprints were accepted to graduate. A larger number of respondents either didn’t have a masters program or didn’t know the graduation requirements. Perhaps the most surprising aspect to these results are the number of institutions that require master level students to have submitted or published a journal article, especially given the generally short timeframes for such programs.
In contrast, PhD graduation requirements had considerably more responses to requiring a journal article being published (Fig 4). The majority of respondents indicated that they needed to have a manuscript accepted in a journal to be able to graduate with a high number requiring the article to have actually been published. Preprints were accepted in similar numbers to manuscripts being ready to submit or those that have been submitted. Again, a large number of respondents indicated that there were no formal requirements for publication at their institution.
Finally, we asked respondents if they would be in favor of institutions including preprints for fulfilling graduation requirements (Fig 5). The responses were relatively evenly split between favoring preprints (41%) and not favoring preprints (43%). This is perhaps due to confusion in the wording of the question as the long form responses indicated that many would prefer no formal publishing requirements. The question had been intended to ask if, where requirements exist, would it be preferred to change these to preprints or keep them as publications.
One important aspect that this survey did not capture is the difference between formal requirements and expectations. Anecdotally, it was highlighted that even in institutions with no formal requirements, individual group leaders or institutions do still enforce unofficial publication requirements. This is not communicated transparently and represents an important area for future investigation.
We also collected long form responses for the question “What concerns would you have about your program making preprints a graduation requirement?” (Table 1). These responses highlighted 1) a desire to remove entirely or replace publication requirements with preprints 2) That publication requirements exert additional and unnecessary pressure on students and can be damaging to the literature and 3) that there are large concerns over the quality and reliability of preprints compared to peer reviewed publications.
| Table 1. Themes from the long text responses | |
| Theme | Supporting Quote(s) |
| Fear of scooping | “Some labs may not want to share their unpublished results yet if they are concerned about being scooped by other labs, or due to pending patents.” |
| Fear of undermining the quality of the dissertation or wider literature | “While preprints are allowed as an exception, they could lower the quality of final thesis products.” “Low quality – never gets published”“A very low quality work that undermine the benefit of preprints.” “That the information published lacks sufficient rigor because it has not been reviewed by experts in the area.” “Having a published preprint is not indicative of a correct scientific quality, since it has not been submitted (a priori) to any review process, and the objective of a PhD program is to train people to develop a quality research career.” |
| Freedom to report negative results | “I think it should be mandatory. Even if you only have negative results, preprints allow you to post those, while most journals would not. So, I believe removing the “publication in journals” criteria and introduce preprinting should be more benefitial for everyone” |
| Preprints should replace publications as requirements | “I don’t think that preprints or published papers should be a graduation requirement at all. However, for those programs that already include as a graduation requirement to have a published paper, preprints should be also be included for fulfillment of graduation requirement equally to published papers.” “I’’m in favor it making it an option, not a requirement.” “I think this is a good option, since many journals require a long review time before accepting an article.” |
| Graduation requirements exert pressure on students | “Sometimes a PhD doesn’t give enough time to finish a story, even for a preprint. In my group it is common for PhD students to finish up their project as a postdoc. The requirement for a preprint (which in some PI’s eyes already has to be almost as ready as a paper for peer-reviewed publication) would put more pressure on students who didn’t have a publication requirement up to now.” “In my university, a publication as first author in an indexed journal is currently required; preprints are not accepted. I think it is counterproductive to require a publication for the graduation of PhDs, since it puts pressure and emphasis on the wrong aspects of the training of future scientists. For this reason it seems to me that a preprint should be sufficient to allow the defense of the thesis and obtaining the title of doctor.” |
Recommendations
Based on the data from our survey, the long form responses and conversations with others based on this work, we make three primary recommendations:
- Make any graduation requirements (formal or expectations) clear and transparent
- Remove requirements to have a manuscript accepted or published; if full removal is not possible then replace publication requirements with preprints
- Provide better education to all staff and students on the role and effectiveness of peer review
These recommendations would boost preprint adoption and use in addition to relieving some undue stress and pressure on students. Additionally, the third recommendation would benefit a large number of scientists who place false reliance on peer review, an experiment that has, based on all available evidence, failed. Preprints place the emphasis back onto the science and content of individual articles.
Supplemental tables
Tables detailing the responses to Fig 1.
Career stage
| Career stage | n | % |
| Principal Investigator/Group Leader | 34 | 42.50 |
| Ph.D. student/ candidate | 19 | 23.75 |
| Postdoc | 7 | 8.75 |
| Master degree | 5 | 6.25 |
| Graduate studies coordinator | 4 | 5.00 |
| Dean | 3 | 3.75 |
| Department head | 3 | 3.75 |
| Investigator | 1 | 1.25 |
| Librarian | 1 | 1.25 |
| Manager at a Funding Institution | 1 | 1.25 |
| Science Writer | 1 | 1.25 |
| scientific coordinator (post PhD) | 1 | 1.25 |
Geographical location
| What is your university or institution’s geographical location? | n | % |
| Australia | 1 | 1.234568 |
| Canada | 2 | 2.469136 |
| Chile | 7 | 8.641975 |
| Colombia | 1 | 1.234568 |
| Costa Rica | 1 | 1.234568 |
| Denmark | 2 | 2.469136 |
| France | 1 | 1.234568 |
| Germany | 5 | 6.172840 |
| India | 2 | 2.469136 |
| Italy | 1 | 1.234568 |
| Mexico | 1 | 1.234568 |
| Netherlands | 2 | 2.469136 |
| Portugal | 2 | 2.469136 |
| Spain | 42 | 51.851852 |
| Sweden | 2 | 2.469136 |
| Switzerland | 1 | 1.234568 |
| United Kingdom | 2 | 2.469136 |
| United States | 6 | 7.407407 |
Discipline
| In which discipline do you work? | n | percentage |
| Agriculture | 1 | 0.8695652 |
| Arts and humanities | 2 | 1.7391304 |
| Biology | 58 | 50.4347826 |
| Chemistry | 8 | 6.9565217 |
| Data Science | 1 | 0.8695652 |
| Earth Science | 1 | 0.8695652 |
| Engineering | 2 | 1.7391304 |
| Environment sciences | 1 | 0.8695652 |
| Medical and health sciences | 39 | 33.9130435 |
| Social sciences | 2 | 1.7391304 |
