Nearly all top journals now allow preprint posting

COVID-19 pushed acceptance ahead by five years, says study author and founder of medRxiv 
Reuters Health

The vast majority of medical journals now allow articles to appear as preprints before they are peer reviewed and officially published, a study finds.

Out of 100 top clinical journals, only one completely disallows preprints, 13 are willing to accept preprinted studies for peer review and publication on a case-by-case basis, and 86 have no restrictions on preprints, according to the report in JAMA Network Open.

The findings represent a major change in medical publishing, says study coauthor Dr Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Yale University in California, and one of the cofounders of the preprint server medRxiv.org.

To take a look at how acceptable preprints had become, Dr Krumholz and colleagues identified the 100 top-ranked journals that publish original clinical research.