The National Library of Medicine (NLM) announced on December 14, 2022, that the first phase of the NIH Preprint Pilot, a project of NLM, has been successful in accelerating and expanding broad discovery of publicly funded research results relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pilot’s first phase added to PubMed Central (PMC) more than 3,300 preprint records reporting on the results of NIH-funded COVID-19 research and made citations discoverable in PubMed.
Preprints are complete and public drafts of scientific articles that have not yet been peer reviewed. Their use in communicating the results of biomedical research surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The NIH Preprint Pilot builds on the role of PMC as a repository for peer-reviewed articles supported by NIH under the NIH Public Access Policy.
The success of the pilot in increasing the discoverability of NIH-funded COVID-19 research has encouraged NLM to extend the pilot in a second phase in early 2023 that will encompass all preprints across the spectrum of NIH-funded research topics. Phase 2 will include all preprints that acknowledge direct NIH support and/or have an NIH-affiliated author, and are posted to an eligible preprint server on January 1, 2023, or later.
For updates and to learn more about preprints, see the NIH Preprint Pilot FAQ.