Get the Word Out: Preprints, Peer-Review, and It's Discontents
It's a way for this author to mention some of his publications, also.
The Frontier Psychiatrists is not remotely a peer-reviewed publication in that it’s written on the daily and only peer-reviewed by my readers1 after it’s out the door.
Part of the reason I write in this format is that my output in the academic literature is slower than I am capable of otherwise. Mostly because writing things for academic journals means I have to write a way that's boring and not funny, and I'm not writing things that are not a little bit funny. And so, as someone with ADHD, I avoid them2.
There is some excellent writing from
on the topic of peer review in academic literature and it’s failure”For the last 60 years or so, science has been running an experiment on itself. The experimental design wasn’t great; there was no randomization and no control group. Nobody was in charge, exactly, and nobody was really taking consistent measurements. And yet it was the most massive experiment ever run, and it included every scientist on Earth.
The point, in theory, of the 15,000 years of work per year scientists spend reviewing other scientists’ work is, presumably, to catch bad science. This has not worked well. Peer Reviewers are catching 20-30% of flaws and fakes. It’s not created a better world or more scientific output of more world-changing power.
Enter pre-prints! A pre-print is a publically available article with a DOI number (so it can be referenced and indexed). It may have been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal but was made available before the peer-review process. Or, as this newsletter would have it, what I write every day.
Pre-prints exploded with covid-193, when getting emerging data out fast so others could know what was happening was crucial.4 It is worth noting that academic publishing is a huge business5, just not for the academics who do all the work:
Its worldwide sales amount to more than USD 19 billion, which positions it between the music industry and the film industry
It’s wildly profitable:
Elsevier6 has a profit margin approaching 40 %7, which is higher than that of companies such as Microsoft, Google and Coca Cola, and the curve is pointing upwards8
Pre-prints may be a bit of a jailbreak? We shall see. This is all a roundabout way to let my readers know I have some pre-prints—I am mostly the senior author— available also on the topic of psychedelic medicine for primary care. These have been submitted to an excellent peer-reviewed journal, the American Journal of Therapeutics, edited by my friend and mentor Peter Manu, M.D. I look forward to their publication in the journal.
If you are interested in seeing what these look like before they are published, peer review and all, behind the subscription paywall of a journal, you can:
1. Historical Perspective and Overview (Introduction)
2. LSD
3. DMT and Ayahuasca
4. Psilocybin
5. Ibogaine
6. MDMA
7. Ketamine
8. The Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of Psychedelic Therapeutics (Conclusion)
Are Pre-Prints Part of the Solution?
I don’t know. I do know that academics isn’t changing the world fast enough, and the suffering we face is tremendous. In the style of Douglas Adams, I will remind us that asking the above questions is the wrong first step. We need to understand what the actual problem might be before grasping at “solutions.”
If we don’t, the answer could be 42 for the meaning of life, but we might miss the question.
Thanks for reading.
Thank you, readers, for you regular fact and error checking feedback!
If I could write medical notes, the world would be a better and more promptly documented place, also!
Guterman, E. L., & Braunstein, L. Z. (2020). Preprints During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Public Health Emergencies and Medical Literature. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 15(10), 634-636. https://doi.org/10.12788/jhm.3491
Watson, C. (2022). Rise of the preprint: How rapid data sharing during COVID-19 has changed science forever. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01654-6
McGuigan, G. S., & Russell, R. D. (2008). The business of academic publishing: A strategic analysis of the academic journal publishing industry and its impact on the future of scholarly publishing.
Ware M, Mabe M. The stm report. An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing. Oxford: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, 2009. https://www.stm-assoc.org/2009_10_13_MWC_STM_Report.pdf Accessed 25.2.2020.
Page B. Elsevier records 2% lifts in revenue and profits. The Bookseller. https://www.thebookseller.com/news/elsevier-records-2-lifts-revenue-and-profits-960016 Accessed 25.2.2020.
Buranyi S. Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? The Guardian 27.6.2017. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science Accessed 25.2.2020.
Ibogaine is one I hear a lot about in back channels but have yet to hear a prescriber talk about. Maybe I’m not listening hard enough, but a 50% reduction in opioid cravings would be massive as per your paper. Eagerly awaiting RCT’s.