Fermat's Library | The prehistory of biology preprints: A forgotten experiment from the 1960s annotated/explained version.

## TL;DR Prior to 1991 there were no platforms like arXiv or bio...

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The paper on Nature was titled [Preprints Galore](https://www.readc...

This is arXiv's monthly submissions over time since 1991. ![](h...

This is a particularly bad in fields like Math, where authors might...

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ESSAY

The prehistory of biology preprints:

A forgotten experiment from the 1960s

Matthew Cobb*

School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

* cobb@manchester.ac.uk

Abstract

In 1961, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began to circulate biological preprints in a for-

gotten experiment called the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs). This system eventually

attracted over 3,600 participants and saw the production of over 2,500 different documents,

but by 1967, it was effectively shut down following the refusal of journals to accept articles

that had been circulated as preprints. This article charts the rise and fall of the IEGs and

explores the parallels with the 1990s and the biomedical preprint movement of today.

Introduction

Since 1991, physicists and mathematicians have been using the arXiv preprint repository to

circulate articles and ideas, to the envy of many biologists. After a number of failed attempts,

including ClinMed Netprints (1999–2005) and Nature Precedings (2007–2012), 2 biology pre-

print servers were launched in 2013—PeerJ Preprints and bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Labo-

ratory). Many journals will now consider an article that has appeared on a preprint server, and

grant-awarding bodies on both sides of the Atlantic allow preprints to be cited in grant and fel-

lowship applications—some, such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, insist that their investiga-

tors deposit their papers as preprints. [1]

This is widely seen as an example of biology finally catching up with physics [2, 3]—it

seems certain that the success of arXiv was influential in finally convincing journals to accept

biology preprints. In fact, biology first adopted large-scale circulation of preprints over half a

century ago, as part of a generalized interest in preprints that spanned much of science. From

1961–1967, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States pioneered a system

known as the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs). The IEGs, forgotten except by a handful

of historians of documentation [4,5,6,7], have been the subject of only 1 investigation, pub-

lished as an unrefereed report in 1971 [8]. The IEGs have not been systematically studied by

science historians—not only is there no IEG archive, there is not even a record of the docu-

ments they produced. The IEGs eventually fell victim to a campaign by journals and learned

societies, who considered the organized circulation of preprints in both biology and physics to

be a threat to their financial interests and to their perceived status as guardians of scientific

integrity [9].

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a1111111111

OPEN ACCESS

Citation: Cobb M (2017) The prehistory of biology

preprints: A forgotten experiment from the 1960s.

PLoS Biol 15(11): e2003995. https://doi.org/

10.1371/journal.pbio.2003995

Published: November 16, 2017

access article distributed under the terms of the

Creative Commons Attribution License, which

permits unrestricted use, distribution, and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original

author and source are credited.

Funding: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory http://

library.cshl.edu/personal-collections/sydney-

brenner/sydney-brenner-scholarship. Sydney

Brenner Research Scholarship. The funder had no

role in study design, data collection and analysis,

decision to publish, or preparation of the

manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared

that no competing interests exist.

Abbreviations: AAI, American Association of

Immunologists; CERN, European Organization for

Nuclear Research; FASEB, Federation of American

Societies of Experimental Biology; IEGs,

Information Exchange Groups; NIH, National

Institutes of Health; NSF, National Science

Foundation; PIE, Physics Information Exchange;

SLAC, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

This article outlines the rise and fall of the IEGs and tells the cautionary tale of the ability of

scientific publishers and entrenched interests within the academic community to restrict the

sharing of knowledge.

Launching the IEGs

In 1961, Francis Crick received a letter from Errett C. Albritton, a 70-year-old administrator at

the NIH (Figs 1A and 2), inviting him to join an informal network for circulating preprints

called an IEG [10]. Crick gave Albritton the brush-off, saying he was ‘strongly opposed’ to the

scheme [11], even though he had spent much of the previous 6 years circulating his own infor-

mal papers in such a network called the RNA Tie Club [12]. ‘There is far too much careless

and rapid communication already in every area of this field of study’, Crick replied. ‘The idea

of increasing it even in this semi-public manner fills me with horror’. Albritton’s response was

good humoured (‘If it would not be a service to the area it needs a speedy burial!’ [13]), but

Crick’s hostility was not widely shared, and there were enough positive responses for the first

IEG to be set up shortly afterwards.

The IEG concept had been dreamt up in January 1961 by Albritton, along with 2 biochem-

ists—David Green (Fig 1B) of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Philip Handler of

Duke University [15]. Albritton later described the IEGs as an ‘experiment’ or a ‘natural his-

tory study’ that would enable researchers working on a tightly focused research area to send

‘any communication whatever’ (preprint, comment, discussion, etc.) to the NIH, where the

‘memo’ would be physically reproduced and then circulated by the postal service to all mem-

bers of the network. All costs were met by the NIH. Although the initial proposal was focused

on a slightly cliquey group of ‘leading investigators’ [16], IEG membership was soon broad-

ened to anyone ‘above the level of graduate student’, although the IEG chair had the final say

on who could join and become a ‘subscriber’ [17]. Although memos were not supposed to be

cited without permission, they could be taken as evidence of priority. The IEGs were intended

to increase informal communication between scientists and to avoid the delays imposed by

traditional publication methods. Albritton’s conception of the IEG was summarized by a brief

slogan that was included on the front cover of each memo: it was a ‘continuing international

congress by mail’ [15].

At one level, there was nothing new about circulating unrefereed documents or preprints.

Previous systems were generally linked to specific institutions, such as the MIT Research Labo-

ratory in Electronics that began producing unrefereed technical reports in 1946 [6] or the pre-

prints circulated by the Petroleum Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society from

1921 [18]. Other sets of unrefereed documents were tightly focused on the needs of a particular

research community, such as the Drosophila Information Service[19], or were collected and

sometimes distributed by institutional libraries, particularly in physics. Albritton’s NIH pro-

posal was far more ambitious. It involved systematically circulating copies of all submitted pre-

prints to a group of subscribers, rather than issuing them on request from an institution [20].

The scale of this experiment was immense, given the technology of the time: by the end of

1965, 3,663 researchers, from 46 different countries, were involved, and 2,561 different memos

had been physically mailed out, involving millions of pages of paper [8].

The first IEG was focused on oxidative phosphorylation and terminal electron transport. It

initially had only 32 members but grew to 386 within 4 years [8]. The IEG1 chair, David

Green, underlined the advantages of the system: ‘The exchange makes it possible for all of its

members to be fully informed in record time of all important developments in the field’ [21].

Other advantages included avoiding the danger of being ‘ambushed by some overzealous or

overopinionated reviewer’, thereby providing ‘an outlet for anyone who feels choked by

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Provenance: Not commissioned; externally peer

reviewed.

editorial intransigence’ [22]. Green insisted that, despite the lack of review, the IEG memos

did not consist of a ‘flood of rubbish’; indeed, it was possible that informal review via the IEG

might lead to a reduction in the number of weaker articles submitted to journals.

In October 1963, Albritton began soliciting suggestions for more IEGs and approached

Sydney Brenner, Jacques Monod, and many others [23]. Like Crick 2 years earlier, Brenner

gave a negative response: ‘the informal contacts that already exist facilitate enough exchange of

information’, he wrote [24]. However, 5 new IEGs were soon created, covering Hemostasis

(IEG2), Computer Simulation of Biological Systems (IEG3), Molecular Basis of Muscle Con-

traction (IEG4), Immunopathology (IEG5), and Interferon (IEG6). IEG7, focused on Nucleic

Acids and the Genetic Code, was launched in early 1966 by Jim Watson and Marshall Niren-

berg. Over 1,100 scientists immediately signed up [8]. Crick’s hostility to the IEG project

diminished, and by October 1965, he was proposing Brenner and others as members of the

future IEG7, although he warned Albritton that having multiple copies of IEG documents

‘pouring into our laboratory is more than we can stomach’ [25]. Among the most significant

memos submitted to IEG7 was Francis Crick’s ‘wobble hypothesis’ explanation of codon–anti-

codon binding [26,27].

Overall, about 80% of the IEG memos were articles. Around one-third of these were circu-

lated after acceptance by a journal but before publication; the remainder were submitted to the

IEG before peer review and would be what we would now classify as preprints. There were also

technical notes and—occasionally—debates. Over one-third of IEG members were from out-

side the US (mainly from the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia), and over 90% of the

Fig 1. (A) Errett C. Albritton, MD (1890–1984), in 1948. Biographical information about Albritton is scant. For

much of his career he was Professor of Physiology at the George Washington University Medical School,

where he specialized in nutrition science. He later joined the NIH, where he worked in the Office of Research

Accomplishments. In 1961, aged 70, he became the cofounder of preprints in the biosciences. Credit:

Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, George Washington University. (B) David E. Green, PhD (1910–1983),

in 1961. Green was a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, focusing on oxidative

phosphorylation. This was the topic of the first IEG, which he cocreated and described as ‘one of the most

revolutionary innovations in the history of science communication’ [9]. A biographical memoir described

Green as ‘one of the giants of 20th century biochemistry. . .a complex person who had an extraordinary

personality’. It makes no mention of his support for preprints [14]. Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin–

Madison Archives (ID S14597). IEG, Information Exchange Group; NIH, National Institutes of Health.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003995.g001

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memos were in English [8]. According to David Green, the system enabled researchers outside

the US, including some in communist countries, to be as clued up about recent developments

as their North American colleagues [9].

The publishers strike back

The 1960s marked a period of substantial growth in scientific publishing, in particular through

the activities of Pergamon Press, set up by the British businessman Robert Maxwell. The

Fig 2. Letter from Albritton to Crick, January 1961 [10]. Credit: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archive.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003995.g002

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number of journal titles published by Pergamon rose from 40 in 1959 to 150 in 1965; while

some were created as money-spinners, others were learned society journals that Pergamon

took over [28]. The financial model that now dominates scientific publishing, with large num-

bers of for-profit journals paid for by institutional library subscriptions, began at this moment

[29].

At this time, there were repeated discussions in the scientific community about the slowness

of publication and the need for more informal and automated methods of communication

[30], including a Ciba Foundation conference on the topic [31] and a report by the US Presi-

dent’s Scientific Advisory Committee [32]. Historians and librarians explored the conse-

quences of the IEG for collaboration [18,33], while an influential article in the Bulletin of the

Atomic Scientists argued that scientists in all fields should set up IEGs [34]. For several years,

the library at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) had collected preprints in high

energy physics from around the world, as had the library at the European Organization for

Nuclear Research (CERN). In 1965, the theoretical physicist Michael Moravcsik proposed for-

malizing these local initiatives, such that in each area of physics a central registry should collate

all preprints and then regularly send out a list of the items that had been received (something

like this was being operated at the Brookhaven National Laboratory) [35]. Within months,

Charles Gottschalk of the US Atomic Energy Commission proposed the creation of a Physics

Information Exchange (PIE). As Moravcsik explained in Physics Today, PIE was not

completely analogous to the IEGs but was close enough that ‘some comfort can be gathered

from the success IEG has encountered among biologists’ [36]. PIE would have a crucial cost-

cutting difference—a single copy of each preprint would be sent to participating libraries,

rather than to each individual member [36-37].

The growth of preprint circulation in all fields of science led some journal publishers—both

commercial companies and learned societies—to feel that their prestige in the scientific com-

munity and their finances could be menaced. The counteroffensive began in April 1966 at a

meeting of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI). Since 1916, the AAI had pub-

lished The Journal of Immunology, and it clearly felt threatened by the creation of IEG5

(Immunopathology) [38], which had gained over 600 members and had produced over 300

memos in little more than a year [8]. The AAI meeting claimed that the circulation of IEG

memos by the NIH was an ‘improper’ activity for a government agency, while the fact that

memos were in reality ‘complete publications’ meant that they posed ‘a real danger’ to immu-

nological journals and might ‘ultimately supersede them’. By a majority of 56 to 39, the AAI

meeting voted that the publication of articles that had been previously circulated by IEG5

‘should not be continued’ [38].

The massive growth in IEG membership (Fig 3) and the looming possibility of PIE, coupled

with the hostility of the AAI to the IEGs, prompted Nature to wade into the debate. It was not

that journal’s finest hour. In a series of articles and editorials in July and August 1966, includ-

ing the unapproved reproduction of one of Albritton’s documents [39], Nature attacked the

growth of the IEGs and the PIE proposal in sometimes sarcastic terms [40,41]. Nature’s first

target was PIE—a proposal the journal considered to be ‘so offensive’ that it hoped it would be

‘stillborn’. The opening of one editorial, particularly condescending and alarmist, revealed the

concern of the commercial publishers: ‘Next to downright villainy, misguided zeal is one of the

most dangerous forces in society,’ they wrote [40].

Next in Nature’s sights were the IEGs, which a few weeks later were attacked by the journal

as ‘suspect’ and a waste of money, as well as for being ‘in the publication business’ no matter

what the NIH might claim. The defects of preprints, thundered the journal, included ‘inacces-

sibility, impermanence, illiteracy, uneven quality, and lack of considered judgment’ [41]. The

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traditional journal system had by contrast ‘encouraged thoroughness and measured judgment

[and] discouraged triviality and repetitive work’.

This claim that journals act as guarantors of scientific quality was a key part of Nature’s crit-

icism, as was the issue of priority. Nature was particularly irked by the fact that IEG members

agreed to treat the memos as priority-laden. As Albritton put it: ‘a paper sent through the IEG

is better protected than one published without prior circulation through the IEG’ [15]. Inevita-

bly, financial considerations were also to the fore. A fraction of the money lavished on circulat-

ing preprints, argued Nature, should be devoted to ‘helping the journals become more

efficient’. The for-profit journal was suggesting that the NIH should keep out of ‘the publica-

tion business’ and instead use that money to help commercial journals. The editorial closed

with the same tone it had used throughout its coverage: ‘If the National Institutes of Health are

as well-disposed towards the cause of effective publication as they seem to be, they could do a

lot to help. The energy they choose to dissipate in Dr Allbritton’s print shop will be a lot less

valuable’ [41].

A similarly aggressive attitude was adopted by the editor of Science. Philip H. Abelson sug-

gested the products of the IEGs could be seen as ‘government-subsidised shoddy merchandise’

and concluded that, while there was an understandable frustration with ‘the inefficiency of

many publications’, the IEGs also revealed ‘a desire on the part of some scientists to avoid a

discipline essential to the integrity of science’ [42].

The fate of the IEGs was sealed not by the leading gatekeepers of scientific publishing but

by a group of specialist journal editors. In September 1966, editors of leading biochemical jour-

nals met in Vienna to discuss the widespread circulation of preprints by the IEGs. There were

13 journals represented at the meeting, including the Journal of Chemical Biology and the Jour-

nal of Molecular Biology [43]. Like the AAI, this group decided—mostly without consulting

their societies or editorial boards [8]—that no article that had been circulated as an IEG memo

Fig 3. Growth of IEG1 1961–1965, as reported by Albritton [15]. Credit: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Archive. IEG, Information Exchange Group.

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would be accepted for publication. It is striking that these journals and those published by the

AAI overlapped with the 2 IEG areas that had the largest memberships: immunopathology

and molecular biology, which together represented nearly 2,000 researchers.

This decision was soon leaked to Nature—an editorial crowed ‘Preprints made outlaws’ and

praised the ‘firm. . .lethal steps’ the Vienna meeting of journal editors had taken against the

IEG system [44]. The editorialist was right: no one would submit a preprint to an IEG under

these conditions. Faced with the inevitable, the NIH caved in, and in November 1966, the head

of the NIH Division of Research Grants, Eugene Confrey, announced that the IEGs would be

closed the following March [45]. Albritton accepted that the IEGs were not financially viable

without external funding [15], and growth in the number of preprints meant the IEGs were

stretching the NIH’s financial and physical resources. Each copy of a memo cost $0.10–$0.50;

by 1967, the IEGs were projected to cost the NIH $400,000 per annum, or over $3 million in

today’s values [8,45].

Meanwhile, the letters pages of Science [46] and Nature [47,48] began to bulge with posi-

tions for and against IEGs. In Science, Philip Siekevitz, a cell biologist at Rockefeller University,

claimed that the IEGs were ‘a dangerous nuisance’, while Nature pointed out in a note that

although it had received 7 letters in support of the IEGs and only 1 against, Theodore Spaet,

the Chair of IEG2, had encouraged its members to write in.

After the IEGs had been killed off, Nature produced a slightly more considered editorial

entitled ‘Secret colleges end’ [49]. The journal recognized that there were problems of slowness

and rigidity in the traditional journal format but insisted that, if successful, the IEGs ‘would

have been an offence against scholarship’. The New England Journal of Medicine followed suit,

going so far as to praise the ‘morally sensitive scientists’ who had opposed the IEGs before fin-

ishing on a contradictory note by calling for the IEG idea to be taken up again once the lessons

had been learned [50]. The journal’s real position on preprints was made clear 2 years later,

when it stated it would not accept any articles that had been previously published, including by

‘controlled-circulation journals’ [51]. Strict application of this principle, known as the Ingelfin-

ger Rule after the journal’s editor and initially focused on preprints and media coverage, was

subsequently extended to prevent the journal from publishing material that had appeared on

any kind of website [52].

The PIE proposals met a similar fate. They were vigorously opposed by Simon Pasternack,

the editor of The Physical Review, who described the project as ‘a great disservice’ [53]. Paster-

nack denied that PIE would be any quicker than traditional publication routes and predicted it

would ‘dilute orderly communication and add confusion’. Going into rhetorical overdrive,

Pasternack claimed PIE threatened physics research communication with ‘obscurity, incom-

pleteness, polemics, inadequate references, discursiveness and irresponsibility’. Samuel Gouds-

mit, the editor of Physical Review Letters, joined in, producing a series of editorials in which he

described a centralized register of preprints as ‘highly undesirable, as it would raise the unrefer-

eed and unedited preprint to virtually the same status as a formal publication’ [54], emphasised

the value provided by journals and peer review [55], and argued against citing preprints [56].

PIE was not stillborn as Pasternack and Nature wished, but it was instead launched for a

trial year, functioning primarily as an announcement service of new preprints and discussion

documents that was circulated to a mailing list; anyone interested had to request the document

directly from the author.

After the IEGs

After minor pushback [57] and some policy discussion of the significance of the experiment

[31], most of the IEGs immediately folded. Albritton had hoped that because many IEG

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members—and even some IEG Chairs—were also Editors or Associate Editors of journals

(including the Journal of Molecular Biology and the Journal of Biological Chemistry), peaceful

coexistence with traditional journals would be possible [15]. This turned out to be naive. The

power of the Vienna editors’ meeting and of the AAI, coupled with the hostility of Science and

Nature and the financial strain on the NIH, stopped the IEGs in their tracks. Only IEG6

decided to keep going, after a 93% positive vote of its members. The 250-strong group contin-

ued to circulate material until at least the late 1970s under the title Interferon Scientific Memo-

randum. To reduce costs, their memos were restricted to 8 pages and distributed as reduced-

size photos, with the support of the American Institute of Biological Sciences [58].

The perception of the IEGs by those who had been involved was overwhelmingly positive.

Professor Michael Woodruff of the University of Edinburgh chided Nature for its ‘timid’ atti-

tude; he found his membership of IEG5 to be of ‘enormous value’ and was ‘most delighted’

with reading and writing memos [59]. Surveys of IEG members showed 94% of the respon-

dents said reading a memo had positively influenced a research decision, while 68% considered

that the memos had saved time and money [8]. However, in most cases, the key memos were

articles that eventually appeared in print; although the IEGs increased the rapidity and effi-

ciency of communication, there was no evidence that it led to greater debate, one of the Albrit-

ton’s key objectives. In this respect, the IEGs failed.

Unbowed, Albritton’s colleagues at the NIH continued to emphasize the value of preprints

[20]. In an understandably embittered article reviewing the rise and fall of the IEGs, David

Green, the chair of IEG1 and cocreator of the scheme, decried the ‘strangulation’ of what he

considered to be ‘one of the most revolutionary innovations in the history of science commu-

nication’ [9]. After dismissing the 3 criticisms leveled at the IEGs by the Vienna meeting and

by Science and Nature (duplication, copyright infringement, and potential misunderstandings

from lack of review), Green explained why the IEGs had really been killed off:

It is my opinion that the stated reasons are not the real reason. Rather, the stated reasons

merely hide the fact that the editors were apprehensive that the status and prestige of the

journals would be downgraded if another agency (IEG) were distributing to its members,

from 6 months to a year earlier than the journals, the very papers which would eventually

appear in the journals, though not necessarily in the same final form.

Nature’s final statement on the affair, made in February 1967, suggested that preprints

should be renamed ‘impersonal communication’ or ‘postal circular’ and reiterated the ‘offense’

the IEGs had given to the established journals because of the claimed potential of duplicate

publications. However, the editorialist was also keen to turn his article into an advert, reassur-

ing his readers that the rapid circulation that was so attractive a feature of the IEGs would soon

be found at Nature, which in a few months would ‘be operating consistently with a time lag of

a few weeks’. The aim was for Nature to ‘beat the IEG at their own game’ [60].

Debate about how to enable more rapid communication of scientific discoveries in all fields

continued into the 1970s [61,62]. The solution was finally found in physics, which already had

established and successful local networks for collecting and distributing preprints. In January

1969, a new service, Preprints in Particles and Fields, was run out of SLAC. It built on the pre-

print services run by Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley and the SLAC library and

drew lessons from the fate of PIE and the IEGs [63]. Within a year, there were around 1,600

subscribers, showing the appetite for preprint circulation.

Over the next 2 decades, publishing was transformed as rapid progress in information tech-

nology enabled the development of increasingly rich and cost-effective schemes for circulating

information. In 1991, Paul Ginsparg at the Los Alamos National Laboratory created an

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automated email server for distributing preprints, a system that eventually became known as

arXiv [64]. In subsequent years, the impact of the World Wide Web, which was launched at

virtually the same time as arXiv, transformed global communication and publishing, including

the circulation of preprints. Initially set up for high energy physics, arXiv gradually extended

into other fields and was soon partly supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) funding

[3,4]. The concerns of a number of scientific societies and publishers were placated by the

gradual growth of the system and the evident fact that it did not damage journal prestige or

finances [5].

Life science researchers, who had either forgotten the IEG affair or never knew of it, could

not help but notice the growth of arXiv. In 1999, Harold Varmus, in his final months as head

of the NIH, became what he later described as a ‘radical proponent’ of new ways of circulating

scientific information [65]. After informal discussions with leading biomedical scientists, Var-

mus proposed the creation of e-Biomed, an electronic repository of preprints that was clearly

modelled on arXiv [52,65]. Varmus opened a consultation on his proposal and received over-

whelming support from the individual scientists who responded to his call, but the journal

publishers were deeply hostile and lobbied extensively against his scheme [65].

An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine warned of ‘a potential threat to the

evaluation and orderly dissemination of new clinical studies’—the journal was concerned that

potentially incorrect clinical papers would gain the imprimatur of the NIH’s authority and

could have significant negative consequences for patient health and well-being (this remains a

worry for medical preprints) [66]. But the journal also revealed that one of its major concerns

was the ‘probably disastrous effects’ on the paid circulation of journals. The Federation of

American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB), a powerful umbrella group of learned

societies, even threatened to use their lobbying power in Congress to affect the NIH budget

should the e-Biomed proposal go ahead [52].

Within 4 months, the project was dead in the water. Varmus accepted that his vision could

not be fully realized in the face of such opposition and focused instead on open access provi-

sion of accepted manuscripts through PubMed Central. This development, together with the

legacy of the e-Biomed initiative, played a role in the development of the open access move-

ment and the launching of PLOS by Varmus, Pat Brown, and Michael Eisen [65]. Nevertheless,

it would be another decade and a half before biologists, their funders, and their editors

accepted what had become commonplace in most parts of physics.

A third attempt in over 50 years to introduce preprints into biology occurred in 2013 with

the launch of PeerJ Preprints and bioRxiv, following a series of initiatives by Ron Vale and oth-

ers [1,2]. This time around, there appears to have been a shift in opinion amongst funders and

publishers of biomedical research—there has not been the kind of hostility that appeared in

the 1960s and 1990s.

This apparent change in attitude has yet to be systematically analysed, but here are some

potential explanations, which are not mutually exclusive:

• The interval from submission to the first journal to final publication (perhaps in another

journal) can be of the order of many months, similar to that in the 1960s. Coupled with the

short duration of postdoctoral posts and the increasingly rapid development of technology,

this has led to growing frustration with the ‘glacial pace’ of publication and a determination

on the part of researchers to find a better solution [67].

• The new biological preprint servers have made clear that they are not encroaching on journal

territory or finances but simply decoupling first dissemination of knowledge from the ‘certi-

fication’ that is represented by peer review.

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• The widespread adoption of open access publishing and the free circulation of data and

ideas may make opposing preprints simply look churlish in the age of the Internet and the

success of arXiv.

• Finally, despite initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

[68], many key decisions affecting the lives of scientists—recruitment, promotion, and fund-

ing—continue to be based on the titles of the journals we publish in, rather than a direct esti-

mation of the quality of the research we produce. In such a world, the journal will not go

extinct—indeed, journals can make money by charging for open access, and can scout out

promising papers on the preprint servers.

Whatever the case, on the third attempt, it appears that a culture of preprints has been

established in the biosciences, although not yet in medicine. The fate of the IEGs should warn

us of the power of commercial publishers and of vested academic interests to restrict the free

circulation of knowledge.

The digital culture we now live in is far beyond the dreams of Errett C. Albritton and his

printed and stapled IEG memos, individually sent out in the mail to eager subscribers. But he

envisioned the importance of the open circulation of knowledge and debate over half a century

ago. His name and his ambitions may have been forgotten, but he would recognize our world.

Acknowledgments

Stephen Curry and Leslie Vosshall are thanked for their comments and encouragement. The

manuscript initially appeared as a preprint on PeerJ.com. The preprint was featured in a Sci-

ence article by Jocelyn Kaiser [1]; this provoked some helpful criticisms from Paul Ginsparg,

which led to the sections on physics being nuanced and much improved. Comparison of the

preprint and the published version reveals the virtues of peer review.

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Discussion

Here's [the report](http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/weinbergreport1963.pdf) by the US President's Scientific Advisory Committee. According to the report: "Refereeing the report literature need not slow the system seriously. Referees will learn that in some cases speed is more important that polish and, unlike referees for archival journals, they will learn to use criteria such as timeliness in making their judgments" The paper on Nature was titled [Preprints Galore](https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/211897a0). It's interesting to see how fiercely the author attacked PIE: from trying to make the case that the costs of circulating the preprints were too high "Is the benefit really worth the cost?... ask whether the same resources might not be spent more profitably in other ways" to claiming that the overall quality was low "and though there is always the chance of coming across something of great value and immediate interest, the depressing truth is that the gold is accompanied by a great bulk of unwanted dross". This is a particularly bad in fields like Math, where authors might have to wait up to 3 years between clicking "upload PDF" and the paper being published on the journal's website - arguably the longest upload times for any piece of content on the entire web! Pergamon Press started in 1948 with the intention to bring the "Springer know-how and techniques of aggressive publishing in science" to Britain. Pergamon Press was later acquired by Elsevier in 1991. This is the number of monthly submissions on bioRxiv since 2013 ![](https://i.imgur.com/5GCU3Z9_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) Even with this growth curve, as of today just 2% of biology papers first appear as preprints. This is arXiv's monthly submissions over time since 1991. ![](https://i.imgur.com/tvkEvOH_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand) ## TL;DR Prior to 1991 there were no platforms like arXiv or bioRxiv to share preprints - a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. In 1961, the NIH supported an experiment called Information Exchange Groups that distributed preprints among scientists via mail and through libraries. The experiment only lasted 6 years before it was shut down due to intense pressure from Journals who, being afraid of competition in the publication business, refused to published preprints. For fields like Biology it took almost 50 years for other preprint platforms like PeerJ and bioRxiv to emerge. Currently academic career progression depends greatly on the impact factor (JIF) of the journals the researcher's papers are published. The problem with the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is that it’s basically a pricing mechanism that turns papers into accounting units. The JIF is a nobility title: papers are born with impact even before anyone reads them. It allows researchers to compress time and get an impact loan to access positions in academia. This creates a terrible gaming mechanism within academia, in which researchers optimize not for real impact but for publishing on journals with a high JIF and journals game their JIF to keep attracting submissions. Mario Biagioli [has a great talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsGYUB3nF6w) on some of the problems of gaming the metrics in academia.

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