Background

Preprint usage is growing rapidly in the life sciences; however, questions remain on the relative quality of preprints when compared to published articles. An objective dimension of quality that is readily measurable is completeness of reporting, as transparency can improve the reader’s ability to independently interpret data and reproduce findings.

Methods

In this observational study, we initially compared independent samples of articles published in bioRxiv and in PubMed-indexed journals in 2016 using a quality of reporting questionnaire. After that, we performed paired comparisons between preprints from bioRxiv to their own peer-reviewed versions in journals.

Results

Peer-reviewed articles had, on average, higher quality of reporting than preprints, although the difference was small, with absolute differences of 5.0% [95% CI 1.4, 8.6] and 4.7% [95% CI 2.4, 7.0] of reported items in the independent samples and paired sample comparison, respectively. There were larger differences favoring peer-reviewed articles in subjective ratings of how clearly titles and abstracts presented the main findings and how easy it was to locate relevant reporting information. Changes in reporting from preprints to peer-reviewed versions did not correlate with the impact factor of the publication venue or with the time lag from bioRxiv to journal publication.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that, on average, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is associated with improvement in quality of reporting. They also show that quality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions.

中文翻译：

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比较生物医学文献中预印本和同行评审文章之间的报告质量

背景

预印本的使用在生命科学中正在迅速增长。但是，与已发表的文章相比，有关预印本相对质量的问题仍然存在。可以衡量的质量客观指标是报告的完整性，因为透明度可以提高读者独立解释数据和复制发现的能力。

方法

在这项观察性研究中，我们最初使用报告质量问卷比较了2016年在bioRxiv和PubMed索引期刊上发表的文章的独立样本。之后，我们在bioRxiv的预印本与自己的同行评审版本之间进行了成对比较。

结果

经过同行评审的文章平均而言，报告质量比预印本更高，尽管差异很小，绝对差异为报告项目的5.0％[95％CI 1.4，8.6]和4.7％[95％CI 2.4，7.0]分别在独立样本和配对样本中进行比较。主标题对标题和摘要如何清楚地呈现主要发现以及找到相关报告信息的难易程度等方面的主观评分之间存在较大差异，这有利于同行评审文章。从预印本到同行评审版本的报告变化与出版地点的影响因素或从bioRxiv到期刊出版的时滞均不相关。

结论

我们的结果表明，平均而言，在同行评审期刊中发表论文与提高报告质量有关。他们还表明，生命科学中预印本的报告质量与同行评审文章处于相似的范围内，尽管平均水平略低，这支持了认为预印本应被视为有效的科学贡献的观点。