preprint

The journal’s executive director speaks with The Scientist about what it hopes to accomplish with its unusual new publishing model.

Increasing mitochondrial activity in worms by engineering a light-activated proton pump into the organelle’s membrane extends the animals’ lifespan without evidence of health decline, according to a preprint.

Evidence suggests that COVID-19 is primarily an airborne disease. Yet the details of how transmission occurs are still debated and frequently misunderstood.

Data from mouse models for mild coronavirus infections and human tissue samples offer further evidence that it doesn’t take a severe infection—or even infection of brain cells at all—to cause long-term neurological symptoms.

In response to two November 2021 articles in The Scientist that called out preprints as a source of medical misinformation, the cofounders of bioRxiv and medRxiv say it’s not the publishing model that’s at fault.

Preprints are likely here to stay. The press, the public, and the research community must adapt to this relatively recent model of scientific publishing if we are to extract its benefits while avoiding its pitfalls.

Preprints can be valuable additions to the scientific literature. But we must start seeing them as perishable commodities rather than akin to peer-reviewed, published studies.

Many scientists have turned to preprints to rapidly disseminate their research on COVID-19, but some disagree with this approach.

Finding and reporting an irregularity in a published study can lead people down an unexpected path.

A Cochrane review bolsters scientists’ advice that ivermectin should not be used against the disease outside of clinical trials, while a study claiming to have found beneficial effects in patients was withdrawn following allegations of data manipulation.

At a time of fast-paced science and rampant misinformation, can we trust the non–peer-reviewed literature?

ASAPbio has developed resources for preprint servers, institutions, scientists, and journalists to promote the responsible reporting of research in the media.

Researchers propose that an infusion of memory T cells from people who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infections could treat severe disease.

The open access publication will use AI to identify the most pressing manuscripts in need of peer review.

Experts identify childcare, which tends to fall to women, as one likely cause for the relative decrease in women’s scientific productivity compared with men’s.

Fast science—with all its warts—is making unprecedented progress in the fight against COVID-19.

The results, while preliminary, suggest that survivors of SARS-CoV-2 infection may be susceptible to reinfection within weeks or months.

Preprints from the first round of seroprevalence studies indicate that many more people have been infected with the virus than previously reported. Some of these studies also have serious design flaws.

Coronavirus experts are swamped with reading submissions, which they’re working through as quickly as possible.