来源：《经济学人》
原文刊登日期：2022年2月5日
Scientific publishing moves slowly. Depending on the academic field, it can take years for a single paper to get published in a well-regarded journal. In that time, a paper might undergo several rounds of peer-review by academic volunteers, followed by corrections—and possibly rejections—before a new scientific result sees the light of day.
科学出版是个很缓慢的过程。有的学术领域，一篇论文可能需要数年时间才能在知名期刊上发表。在这段时间里，一篇论文可能要经过几轮学术志愿者的同行评审，然后被修改——甚至可能被拒绝——直到一项新的科学结果被公之于世。
This rigmarole is meant to ensure that the research that enters the scientific record is reputable, rigorous and trustworthy. That is admirable—and the system generally works well—but it also introduces a bottleneck, delaying the circulation of new scientific results. To get around this, scientists can release a “preprint”: a manuscript of a paper posted to a public server online before it has completed a formal peer-review process.
这一冗长的程序是为了确保进入科学记录的研究是有信誉的、严谨的和值得信赖的。这是值得赞赏的——而且该系统总体上运行良好——但它也引入了一个瓶颈，延迟了新的科学成果的传播。为了解决这个问题，科学家们可以发布一份“预印本”：在完成正式的同行评议程序之前，将论文的手稿发布到网上公共服务器上。
Preprints are commonplace in physics and mathematics. During the covid-19 pandemic, these publications took off in biology, genomics and medicine too, reflecting the urgency of communicating coronavirus-related findings to other scientists, government officials, and the public.
预印本在物理和数学中很常见。在新冠大流行期间，预印本在生物学、基因组学和医学领域也出现了增长，这反映出向其他科学家、政府官员和公众传播与冠状病毒相关发现的紧迫性。
Some have expressed concerns over the quality of preprints, however, arguing that publishing research prematurely risks undermining the integrity of science if conclusions may later need to be revised. Fortunately, a study published in the journal PLOS Biology suggests that they have little to worry about.
然而，一些人对预印本的质量表示担忧，认为如果结论以后可能需要修改，过早发表研究可能会损害科学诚信。幸运的是，发表在《公共科学图书馆·生物学》杂志上的一项研究表明，这些人的担心是多余的。
A team of researchers led by Jonathon Coates, a biologist at Queen Mary University, decided to analyse how reliable preprints were early in the pandemic. They compiled a set of 184 research papers in the life sciences that had initially been posted as preprints on bio Rxiv and medRxiv—two large preprint servers—and later published in one of 23 major scientific journals.
由玛丽王后大学生物学家乔纳森·科茨领导的一个研究小组决定分析在疫情早期预印本的可靠性。他们汇编了184篇生命科学研究论文，这些论文最初作为预印本发表在bio-Rxiv和medrxiv这两个大型预印本服务器上——后来发表在23家主要科学期刊上。
They compared each preprint with its more polished version that had later appeared in a journal. They looked for content that had been added or removed from the body of the manuscript, tables or figures that had been rearranged, and when key wording had been changed.
他们将每个预印本与后来发表在期刊上的经过润色的版本进行了比较。他们寻找手稿正文中添加或删除的内容，重新排列的表格或图表，以及关键措辞发生的变化。
Dr Coates’s analysis found that 82.8% of coronavirus-related preprints and 92.8% of non-coronavirus-related preprints saw no material change to their conclusions upon journal publication. Of the changes that were made, most involved only strengthening or weakening of conclusions. Only one paper out of 184 saw one of its conclusions reversed. “This is a welcome finding,” says Dr Coates. “Ultimately, scientists share preprints because they think the work is ready, not simply to rush it out—the results of our study reflect that.”
科茨博士分析发现，82.8%的冠状病毒相关预印本和92.8%的非冠状病毒相关预印本在期刊发表后结论没有实质性变化。在所作的改变中，大多数只涉及加强或削弱结论。184篇论文中只有一篇的结论被推翻。“这是一个值得欢迎的发现，”科茨博士说。“最终，科学家们分享预印本是因为他们认为工作已经准备好了，而不是简单地急于完成——我们的研究结果反映了这一点。”
These findings support arguments made by advocates of “open science”, who say that new scientific results should be made available to other researchers and the public freely and quickly. Dr Coates’s work suggests that the usual gatekeepers of the research, scientific journals, may add little scientific value to the original research manuscripts. Their large subscription fees, therefore, look increasingly at odds with the value they provide.
这些发现支持了“开放科学”倡导者的观点，他们认为新的科学成果应该免费和快速地提供给其他研究者和公众。科茨博士的研究表明，通常作为研究看门人的科学期刊，可能不会给原始研究手稿增加多少科学价值。因此，它们的高额订阅费与它们提供的价值越来越不相符。