Institute of Medical Biochemistry Leopoldo de Meis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Berlin Institute of Health at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, QUEST Center for Responsible Research, Berlin, Germany.
JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Aug 1;6(8):e2331410. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.31410.
Preprints have been increasingly used in biomedical science, and a key feature of many platforms is public commenting. The content of these comments, however, has not been well studied, and it is unclear whether they resemble those found in journal peer review.
To describe the content of comments on the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint platforms.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: In this cross-sectional study, preprints posted on the bioRxiv and medRxiv platforms in 2020 were accessed through each platform's application programming interface on March 29, 2021, and a random sample of preprints containing between 1 and 20 comments was evaluated independently by 3 evaluators using an instrument to assess their features and general content.
The numbers and percentages of comments from authors or nonauthors were assessed, and the comments from nonauthors were assessed for content. These nonauthor comments were assessed to determine whether they included compliments, criticisms, corrections, suggestions, or questions, as well as their topics (eg, relevance, interpretation, and methods). Nonauthor comments were also analyzed to determine whether they included references, provided a summary of the findings, or questioned the preprint's conclusions.
Of 52 736 preprints, 3850 (7.3%) received at least 1 comment (mean [SD] follow-up, 7.5 [3.6] months), and the 1921 assessed comments (from 1037 preprints) had a median length of 43 words (range, 1-3172 words). The criticisms, corrections, or suggestions present in 694 of 1125 comments (61.7%) were the most prevalent content, followed by compliments (n = 428 [38.0%]) and questions (n = 393 [35.0%]). Criticisms usually regarded interpretation (n = 286), methodological design (n = 267), and data collection (n = 238), while compliments were mainly about relevance (n = 111) and implications (n = 72).
In this cross-sectional study of preprint comments, topics commonly associated with journal peer review were frequent. However, only a small percentage of preprints posted on the bioRxiv and medRxiv platforms in 2020 received comments on these platforms. A clearer taxonomy of peer review roles would help to describe whether postpublication peer review fulfills them.
预印本在生物医学科学中越来越多地被使用，许多平台的一个关键特征是公开评论。然而，这些评论的内容尚未得到很好的研究，也不清楚它们是否类似于期刊同行评审中的评论。
描述 bioRxiv 和 medRxiv 预印本平台上评论的内容。
设计、设置和参与者：在这项横断面研究中，于 2020 年在 bioRxiv 和 medRxiv 平台上发布的预印本于 2021 年 3 月 29 日通过每个平台的应用程序编程接口获取，对包含 1 到 20 条评论的随机预印本进行了独立评估由 3 名评估员使用评估特征和一般内容的工具进行评估。
评估了来自作者或非作者的评论数量和百分比，并评估了非作者的评论内容。评估了这些非作者的评论，以确定它们是否包含赞美、批评、更正、建议或问题，以及它们的主题（例如，相关性、解释和方法）。还分析了非作者的评论，以确定它们是否包含参考文献、提供研究结果摘要或质疑预印本的结论。
在 52736 篇预印本中，有 3850 篇（7.3%）至少收到 1 条评论（平均[标准差]随访时间为 7.5[3.6]个月），评估了 1921 条评论（来自 1037 篇预印本），中位数长度为 43 个单词（范围为 1-3172 个单词）。在 1125 条评论中的 694 条（61.7%）中存在批评、更正或建议，这是最常见的内容，其次是赞美（n=428[38.0%]）和问题（n=393[35.0%]）。批评通常涉及解释（n=286）、方法设计（n=267）和数据收集（n=238），而赞美主要涉及相关性（n=111）和影响（n=72）。
在这项对预印本评论的横断面研究中，与期刊同行评审相关的常见主题经常出现。然而，2020 年在 bioRxiv 和 medRxiv 平台上发布的预印本中，只有一小部分在这些平台上收到了评论。更明确的同行评审角色分类法将有助于描述发布后同行评审是否能满足这些角色。
