Podcast 224: What’s a “preprint server,” and how might it change how we think about journals?

August 23rd, 2018

Podcast 224: What’s a “preprint server,” and how might it change how we think about journals?

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Rohan Khera wrote an editorial in The BMJ to accompany his own paper on guidelines for hypertension treatment. In it, he wrote, not about his research, but about the way biomedical articles are published now, and how preprint servers could change that. (In essence, pre-print servers are online repositories of rough drafts of research available for all to see; articles on such servers have not been subjected to peer review.)

Khera’s research article, it should be noted, originally appeared months earlier in draft form on BioRxiv, a biomedical preprint server.

Khera argues that the “official” journals are too slow. He fears their slowness. for instance, can prevent important data from reaching policymakers when it’s most needed — while they are making decisions based on new research languishing in the standard publication process.

Khera’s BMJ commentary

Khera et al.’s preprint on BioRxiv

Khera et al.’s resarch article as published in The BMJ

Conversation with Harlan Krumholz (from 2016): “Rethinking what medical journals do”

Clinical Conversations

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August 23rd, 2018