In the virtual 15th Conference of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), a debate was held on the motion: Preprints are going to replace journals. I was asked to oppose the motion and this article is based on my arguments.
Since 2016, the number of preprint servers has rapidly increased and now stands at more than 60. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of preprints, as a vehicle for open science, has widely been discussed, as have the limitations of the academic journals. For three reasons, however, I believe that preprints are not going to replace journals.
There’s much to like about preprint servers. And we certainly do. The democratisation of knowledge and the immediacy and transparency of scientific correction amongst the reasons why. But this thoughtful Scholarly Kitchen piece reflects on why they are unlikely to replace journals.
Preprints also meet most of these, but, before making preprints public, the validation part is totally missing. The meaning of the word ‘published’ has been changing due to digitalization, but, can we really call preprints ‘formally published’? Do they truly cross the line between unpublished and published? I would prefer to call preprints ‘research documents’ or ‘research communication’, but not formal research publications, like academic journal articles.