From the Desk of Dr. Danielle Meadows,
Vice President of Research Programs & Operations
On a recent Science Wednesday, I wrote about the publication process (the last stage of the research process), including how peer-reviewed publication works and why we bother with it. If you missed that email or want a refresher, you can check it out on our website.
One thing I didn’t go into in that overview, however, is the concept of a preprint. I want to take this opportunity to briefly introduce preprints to the conversation, and use a recent example of a preprint becoming a peer-reviewed publication to provide more context.
The Heart of the Matter
- A preprint is a version of a paper that is publicly shared before it has been peer reviewed.
- OMF’s Computational Research Center and the ME/CFS Collaborative Center at Stanford University released a preprint in September 2024 of their work investigating the pathogenesis of ME/CFS using data from the severely ill patient study (SIPS).
- After undergoing the peer-review process, which required only minor revisions, the team’s manuscript was recently published in Frontiers Human Neuroscience.
What is a preprint?
A preprint is a version of a scientific paper that is shared with the public before it has been peer reviewed for publication in a journal. Preprints are ideal for sharing research results more quickly than the peer review process allows, and they are open access—they can be accessed by anyone for free.
OMF encourages releasing preprints for its studies, but there are times when a preprint isn’t appropriate. Some reasons why it isn’t always possible to release a preprint include:
- Releasing a preprint can undermine efforts to pursue a patent based on the results of the research. This may come into play for ME/CFS research working on identifying a biomarker or creating a diagnostic test.
- Not all journals will allow you to submit a manuscript for consideration if it has already been released as a preprint.
Update: A Network Medicine Approach to Investigating ME/CFS Pathogenesis in Severely Ill Patients: A Pilot Study
OMF’s Computational Research Center and the ME/CFS Collaborative Center at Stanford University released a preprint in September 2024 of their work studying the pathogenesis of ME/CFS in severely ill patients. The severely ill patient study (SIPS) included 20 patients exhibiting severe symptoms of ME/CFS, and this particular research approach utilized whole genome sequencing on blood samples from the project.
The pilot study found a strong interplay with immune and neurological conditions and included a significant presence of genes associated with fatigue and cognitive disorders. For a full recap of the paper’s findings, check out our summary here.
After submitting the manuscript to Frontiers Human Neuroscience, the paper went through one round of review. The reviewers required only minor edits to the manuscript, including adding more context to the results based on the original SIPS and updating Table 1 to make it more readable. Since the edits were minor, the paper was accepted and published relatively quickly in only 4 months.
Read the full publication in Frontiers Human Neuroscience.
