Nearly 1,500 researchers and librarians shared how they read, submit, and evaluate preprints—here’s what we learned.
ChemRxiv, the premier preprint server for the chemical sciences, recently conducted its 2025 Community Survey to gauge how researchers and librarians engage with preprints. With almost 1,500 respondents from across academia, industry, and government, the survey provided some fascinating insights on evolving attitudes, behaviors, and expectations around the role that preprints play in how research is discovered and disseminated. Here are five of the key takeaways from the survey.
1. Preprint reading is on the rise, and discovery depends on search engines
One of the most encouraging trends in the 2025 survey is an increase in how much, and how regularly, respondents engage with preprints. Compared to 2022, the proportion of respondents who report reading preprints 3 or more times per week has more than doubled. In 2025, 9% of respondents read preprints daily, and 24% read them three or more times per week—up from 3% and 12%, respectively, in 2023.
Search engines like Google Scholar are the dominant method for discovering the latest preprints (49% of respondents discover preprints this way), followed by colleague recommendations (32%) and social media platforms (25%). Alerts from preprint servers and indexing services also play a role, but slightly less prominently (23% each).
2. Preprint submission is still gaining traction, but some barriers persist
While ChemRxiv and other preprint platforms are seeing growth in the amount of content they share, our respondents identified some barriers that keep them from sharing more (or any) work as preprints, including:
- Confidentiality concerns that preclude public posting of early drafts (28%)
- Doubts about citation levels (14%)
- Reluctance to share early drafts (14%)
3. Authors value speed, visibility, and scientific priority
When asked about the benefits of posting preprints, respondents overwhelmingly cited:
- Staking the first claim to new research (60% of respondents viewed this as ‘Extremely important’ or ‘Very important’)
- Rapid sharing of results to the community (59%)
- Receiving feedback from peers on new results (43%)
Free-text responses from the survey underscore the importance of preprints for early-career researchers, especially those applying for jobs or fellowships where final publication may take several months. Others emphasized the role of preprints in open science, documenting progress for grants and annual reviews, and enabling timely dissemination of findings.
4. Concerns about quality, misinformation, and journal conflicts remain
Despite the benefits, concerns about preprints persist. The most cited issues include:
- Lack of peer review (45%)
- The use of preprints to spread misinformation (38%)
- Preprints counting as prior art in patent applications (34%)
In open-ended comments, some researchers expressed concerns that preprints may be misinterpreted by the public or used prematurely in media coverage, especially in sensitive fields like biomedical sciences. Others expressed frustration with journals that reject preprinted work (though such cases should be far rarer than in the past, as most prominent chemistry journals now support preprinting), and institutional leadership that fails to recognize preprints as legitimate scholarly output.
5. ChemRxiv is authors’ preferred platform, and you had some suggestions for improvement
Among respondents who have posted preprints, ChemRxiv was the most popular platform for doing so: 22% of respondents had submitted to ChemRxiv, 17% to another platform, and 5% had submitted both to ChemRxiv and other servers. The majority of those who have submitted to ChemRxiv (81%) rated their experience as “good” or “great.”
Feedback from the survey also highlighted some areas where we could improve, particularly more robust version control, speed of screening, better integration with services such as ORCID, PubPeer, and Hypothes.Is, and encouraging more authors to link their preprints to the version of record.
Final thoughts
The results of the 2025 ChemRxiv Community Survey paint a picture of a research community that is increasingly embracing preprints, but not without reservations. Preprints offer many benefits—chiefly visibility, speed of communication, and as a channel to gather early feedback from peers—but valid concerns remain over their status as non-peer reviewed literature, and how they may be cited as prior art in patent applications which restricts their uptake in certain branches of chemistry research.
We want to thank each and every one of our respondents for their time and input. The survey has provided us with useful data to help us understand how and why you’re using preprints, and given us some clear directions to explore as we continue to evolve ChemRxiv in the future.