At a time when precision medicine moves at the pace of data, it’s no longer enough to discover something, it has to be seen, cited, and built upon fast. As someone who leads a company deeply embedded in scientific data workflows, I’ve come to believe that the bottleneck in science isn’t discovery. It’s dissemination. And that’s where preprints are quietly changing the game.

Because in drug discovery, diagnostics, or AI-enabled R&D, the time between breakthrough and visibility is more than a delay, it’s a risk.

Science Can't Matter If It Isn't Seen

Platforms like bioRxiv didn’t emerge out of impatience. They emerged because of a structural lag.

You can have your most critical insight, say, a breakthrough in early-stage Parkinson’s detection, but unless it’s accepted by a peer-reviewed journal, it doesn’t “exist” in the eyes of funders, reviewers, or hiring committees.

It takes, on average, 9 to 18 months for research to go from manuscript to published article in a traditional journal (Klein et al., 2019). That’s a year and a half in which no one outside the author's circle can act on the insights.

By contrast, bioRxiv preprints go live within 48–72 hours of submission. They’re immediately citable, indexed, and discoverable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this speed proved critical, nearly 30% of early COVID literature came from preprints, enabling faster policy and research responses (Fraser et al., 2021).

And for those worried about scooping? Only 0.7% of authors reported losing a journal opportunity due to preprinting (Sarabipour et al., 2019). In fact, the timestamp of a preprint often protects priority.

By contrast, preprints offer an immediate alternative. They’re timestamped, indexed, and citable within 48 hours. In high-velocity fields like genomics, neuroscience, or pandemic response, that timeline makes all the difference. The work starts shaping the field the moment it’s out. And the researcher gets to plant a flag: publicly and permanently.

The Preprint Advantage and What It Doesn’t Replace

To be clear, bioRxiv isn’t a replacement for peer review.

It’s a supplement and a powerful one.

Researchers who preprint aren’t just sharing faster. They’re also getting more citations. A study by Fu & Hughey (2020) found that articles posted as preprints received 1.5x more citations and higher Altmetric attention than non-preprinted counterparts. Preprints also attract more media coverage, more social media mentions, and higher engagement, a signal of broader impact.

And the notion that preprints are inherently lower in quality? The data doesn’t support it.

In fact, a recent study by Olavo Amaral and colleagues (ASAPbio, 2024) comparing over 150 articles found that while peer-reviewed papers scored slightly higher on reporting quality by just 5 percentage points on average, many preprints matched or exceeded their published counterparts. Interestingly, preprints with figures embedded in the text scored as well as peer-reviewed articles, suggesting that perception of quality is often linked to presentation, not substance.

The visibility can drive early feedback, cross-lab collaboration, and often improves the final journal version. Still, it doesn’t carry the same weight on a CV. In many institutions, peer-reviewed publications remain the “currency” of academic progression.

So while preprints increase the impact of a paper, peer-reviewed journals still control the credibility narrative.

Prestige Still Lives in the Journal Title

Despite the speed, reach, and accessibility of preprints, most researchers still aim for journal acceptance. And they’re not wrong to. A paper in Nature Biotechnology still opens more doors than 10,000 preprint reads, at least for now.

This is the paradox we live with. The system values the venue more than the velocity. And until institutions recalibrate incentives, early-career scientists will continue to navigate both tracks: using preprints to build momentum and journals to secure recognition.

But that doesn’t mean businesses, partners, or funders should wait. Because innovation won’t.

Why This Matters Beyond Academia

This isn’t just about tenure committees. It’s about what happens when a new target prediction method is released and your competitor adapts to it immediately because they saw the preprint.

In one internal example, we spotted a spatial metabolomics pipeline on bioRxiv that mirrored a challenge a partner was facing. Within the week, we had adapted our validation process. No embargo. No lag.

Science-led businesses :platform biotechs, diagnostics companies, CDMOs, are now scouting preprints for partnership opportunities, benchmarking insights, or go/no-go signals. A 2022 bioRxiv survey found that 74% of authors saw increased awareness of their work after preprinting. For the ecosystem, that means earlier access to promising IP and faster cycle times from discovery to application.

Preprints are no longer just a way to share. They’re how science gets done.

What We Miss by Waiting

What’s lost in the months between submission and publication?

Often: momentum.

And sometimes: opportunity.

A 2021 analysis of >170,000 preprints found that the average delay between preprint and journal publication was about 6–9 months (Abdill & Blekhman, 2019). During that time, competitors move forward, programs get deprioritized, and the window to collaborate quietly closes.

The tragedy isn’t that good science goes unnoticed. It’s that it arrives too late to matter.

The Way Forward: Not Either-Or, But Both

Preprints democratize access and accelerate visibility. Journals validate through scrutiny and gatekeeping. We need both. But we also need to recognize that visibility is not a luxury, it’s infrastructure.

Funders like NIH and Wellcome Trust now allow preprints to be cited in grants. Some journals, like eLife and PLOS, integrate preprint review directly. And new initiatives (like Review Commons and ASAPbio) are pushing to make peer review portable across platforms.

But the biggest shift? It’s happening in how R&D-centric organizations consume science.

Preprints are becoming the first filter for competitive landscaping, target tracking, and early academic engagement. Whether or not journals adapt fast enough is still an open question.

But the reality is clear:
Science moves faster when we stop waiting for permission to share it.

References:

• Amaral, O. B. (2024). Comparing quality of reporting between preprints and peer-reviewed articles – first results are in!, ASAPbio.
• Abdill, R. J., & Blekhman, R. (2019). Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv preprints. eLife.
• Fraser, N., Brierley, L., Dey, G., et al. (2021). The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape. PLOS Biology.
• Fu, D. Y., & Hughey, J. J. (2020). Releasing a preprint is associated with more attention and citations for the peer-reviewed article. eLife.
• Sarabipour, S., Debat, H. J., Emmott, E., et al. (2019). On the value of preprints: An early career researcher perspective. PLOS Biology.
• Klein, M., Broadwell, P., Farb, S. E., & Grappone, T. (2019). Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions. International Journal on Digital Libraries.