Abstract
Preprints are becoming well established in the life sciences, but relatively little is known about the demographics of the researchers who post preprints and those who do not, or about the collaborations between preprint authors. Here, based on an analysis of 67,885 preprints posted on bioRxiv, we find that some countries, notably the United States and the United Kingdom, are overrepresented on bioRxiv relative to their overall scientific output, while other countries (including China, Russia, and Turkey) show lower levels of bioRxiv adoption. We also describe a set of ‘contributor countries’ (including Uganda, Croatia and Thailand): researchers from these countries appear almost exclusively as non-senior authors on international collaborations. Lastly, we find multiple journals that publish a disproportionate number of preprints from some countries, a dynamic that almost always benefits manuscripts from the US.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | e58496 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-17 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | eLife |
| Volume | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Alex D Wade (Chan Zuckerberg Initia-tive) for his insights on author disambiguation and the members of the Blekhman lab for helpful discussions. We also thank the Research Organization Registry community for curating an extensive, freely available dataset on research institutions around the world. National Institutes of Health R35-GM128716 Ran Blekhman University of Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Ran Blekhman.
Publisher Copyright:
© Abdill et al.
