Preprints in Health Professions Education: Raising awareness and shifting culture

A preprint is a version of a research manuscript posted by its author to a preprint server prior to peer review. Preprints are associated with a variety of benefits including the ability to rapidly communicate research, the opportunity for researchers to receive early feedback, and broad unrestricted access. For early career researchers preprints also provide a mechanism for demonstrating research progress and productivity without the lengthy timelines of traditional journal publishing. Despite these benefits, a minority of health professions education (HPE) research articles are deposited as preprints, suggesting that preprinting is not currently integrated into HPE culture. In this commentary, the authors introduce preprints, describe their benefits and related risks, and discuss potential barriers that might cause HPE researchers to hesitate to deposit them. In particular, the authors propose the barriers of discordant messaging and the lack of formal and informal education on how to deposit, critically appraise, and use preprints. To mitigate these barriers, several recommendations are proposed to facilitate preprints in becoming an accepted and encouraged component of HPE culture, allowing the field to take full advantage of this evolving form of research dissemination.