Meta-Research: International Authorship and Collaboration across bioRxiv Preprints | Richard J. Abdill, Elizabeth M. Adamowicz and Ran Blekhman | eLife, 2020
Based on an analysis of 67,885 preprints, this study has found that some countries, e.g., the United States and the United Kingdom, are overrepresented on bioRxiv relative to their overall scientific output, while other countries, e.g., China and Turkey, show lower levels of preprint adoption.
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This paper suggests that, while preprints have gained significantly in adoption, notably in North America and Australasia, their inherent benefits accrue disproportionately to developed countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, whereas preprint adoption rates in emerging economies and developing countries lag behind substantially. Yet bioRxiv data also show a near parity in citable document numbers between China and the United States with the United Kingdom, Germany and France trailing behind in this regard. Likewise, developed countries, such as Austria, Germany and Singapore, consistently exhibit higher than average preprint download rates, which is not the case for emerging economies.