Communicating at the Speed of Science

By Emma Hall, Research Fellow at IGC

How we communicate our science is rapidly evolving.

With the recent launch of openRxiv, a new non-profit home for preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv, the IGC Research Culture Group is thrilled to host co-founder Richard Sever at the IGC on Friday 28 March at 11am. Marking the next chapter in how these preprint servers are managed, we discuss the complicated landscape of scientific publishing and think about how we communicate our science here at the IGC.

As scientists, it is our responsibility to share our results and conclusions, to extend human knowledge and benefit society. Increasingly, how and where we share our findings are of mounting importance.

Challenges in the current publishing model

The traditional for-profit publishing system is far from perfect. It is criticised for being too slow and too expensive, with academia placing too much emphasis on journal prestige and unreliable metrics. Efforts like DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) aim to counteract our reliance on unreliable metrics, but the hypercompetitive academic environment persists in valuing where you publish over what is published.

The current system undervalues academics’ time, by requiring repetitive revisions, lengthy peer reviews often completed outside work hours (Barnett et al. 2019 doi: 10.1136/bmj.l6460)), reformatting after rejection and limited review transfer to subsequent journals.

Globally, and here at the IGC, there is a push for alternatives to multibillion dollar for-profit publishing. Open Research advocates for making scientific findings – publications, data, samples, software – accessible to all (read more here). Open-access publishing is a key part of this, offering free access to publications without paywalls (you can read more about Open Access publishing at the University of Edinburgh here.)

Not-for-profit publishing

Not-for-profit publishing offers other peer-review options. Learned society journals are highly regarded for maintaining rigorous peer review and high-quality content. For example, The Company of Biologists (CoB) is a not-for-profit publishing organisation, publishing leading peer-review journals including Disease Models and Mechanisms. IGC Professor Liz Patton, Editor-in-Chief of DMM states:

DMM emphasis on quality research and accessibility together with its not-for-profit status inspired me to take the role of Editor-in-Chief. DMM is an open-access journal, and as practicing scientists, the DMM editor team promote other aspects of open science like data sharing, ensuring research is freely accessible to all.

IGC Professor Pleasantine Mill recently joined the CoB Board and praises its century-long legacy of driving positive change and advocating open science:

CoB has a long legacy of driving positive change. It was the career-long benefits of travel bursaries and society awards, together with the shared values of open science and advocacy, that made rolling up my sleeves worthwhile.

Further not-for-profit open-access journals emerged with the shift from paper to online led by contributors such as the PLOS family of journals. MRC Human Genetics Unit Director Professor Wendy Bickmore, Epigenetics Section Editor at PLOS Genetics, further strengthens the IGC’s ties to open-access publishing:

I am a Section Editor at PLOS Genetics because I strongly believe that practising scientists are best equipped to make editorial judgements about the importance and quality of research in our fields. I particularly enjoy drawing on my research network for peer-reviewers and guest editors – not just the ‘usual suspects’ of leading names.

The rise of preprints

A major advancement in manuscript dissemination is the popularity growth of preprints. Servers bioRxiv and medRxiv now hold > 330,000 manuscripts (Naddaf, 2025 doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00762-4) offering rapid dissemination of research, the value of which was clearly demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crucially preprints are free to deposit and access. Preprints are manuscripts that have not (yet) been peer-reviewed (note: >70% of preprints are ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals; Abdill RJ,and Blekhman R 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.45133).

Reviewed preprints

With thousands of unreviewed preprints online, assessing quality can be challenging, especially for non-experts. Are there ways of curating the data, and marking levels of trust on data beyond the traditional journal peer review models? New models are emerging.

I am currently a Regional Outreach Intern at eLife, an independent non-profit that launched a new publishing model in 2023, where manuscripts are published as reviewed preprints, combining the speed and openness of preprints with the expert scrutiny of peer review: The eLife Model: Two-year update | Inside eLife | eLife. Their Publish, Review, Curate model uses prominent ‘eLife Assessments’ which aim to switch the focus away from where we publish, on to what we publish.

Other review models, including Peer Community In and Review Commons, are exploring new ways to validate preprints (Sever, R and Carvalho T, 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.20344/amp.19675).

The future of publishing?

What now? As a scientist, you decide where you publish, but we all operate within a larger system that is slow to adapt. The future of publishing lies in scientists collectively pushing for change.

As Richard Sever questions: