2. Demand for Faster Scientific Communication Channels
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the academic community did something out of the ordinary. Within four months of the first confirmed case, the research community had published an estimated 16,000 articles on the virus—almost 40% of which were preprints.1 By the end of 2020, 100,000 articles had been published,2 and according to the same analysis, preprints accounted for an estimated 17–30% of these articles.
As a yardstick, 1% to 2% of the articles listed in PubMed were initially made available as preprints.3 While these data are an imperfect source of comparison, because one cannot know what percentage of COVID-19 preprints will become articles over time, the large number of preprints submitted in 2020 illustrates a sea change in the communication practices of the research community when faced with the urgency of responding to a major humanitarian health crisis.
This demand highlighted important—and diverse—pressure points in the current scien-tific communication ecosystem that merit close attention. Among these are the need to invest in technical and human infrastructure that can ensure rapid communication of scientific findings, along with the quality assurance, scientific integrity, and validation services the research community requires. Also crucial are both more robust research incentives for faster sharing of results outside of traditional journals and also rewards for contributions to validating, curating, and prioritizing research results on non-journal platforms.
