Priority of discovery in the life sciences.
The job of a scientist is to make a discovery and then communicate this new knowledge to others. For a scientist to be successful, he or she needs to be able to claim credit or priority for discoveries throughout their career. However, despite being fundamental to the reward system of science, the principles for establishing the "priority of discovery" are rarely discussed. Here we break down priority into two steps: disclosure, in which the discovery is released to the world-wide community; and validation, in which other scientists assess the accuracy, quality and importance of the work. Currently, in biology, disclosure and an initial validation are combined in a journal publication. Here, we discuss the advantages of separating these steps into disclosure via a preprint, and validation via a combination of peer review at a journal and additional evaluation by the wider scientific community.
Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States.
Ronald D
RD
Vale
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany.
Anthony A
AA
Hyman
D001690:Biological Science Disciplines; D033181:Information Dissemination; D017712:Peer Review, Research / Q000592:standards*; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards*; D012106:Research
peer review; post-publication peer review; preprints; priority; scientific publishing