Daniela Lisbôa, Science Communication Assistant at the journal DADOS and PhD Candidate in Sociology at the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos (IESP) of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Since 2020, the journal DADOS began to accept the submission of articles made available on preprint servers — manuscripts published online by the authors themselves before peer review. The initiative follows the guidelines of the Open Science Program (OSP), which promotes open access to scientific research, encouraging transparency, data sharing and international collaboration.
Although preprints represent an important advance towards a more agile and accessible science, many authors and researchers still demonstrate preference for traditional publication models, based on peer review in established journals. As our editor-in-chief, Luiz Augusto Campos, explains in the following video (Portuguese only) and in the post O que são preprints? (Portuguese only) on the DADOS blog, these traditional models face structural limitations, such as slowness in submission1 and double-anonymous review.
Preprints emerge, therefore, as a viable alternative that, despite the criticism2, allows faster dissemination of scientific production. Beyond that, it enables the expansion of academic debate, allowing anyone to comment or review a manuscript in a virtual environment. Below, we discuss these and other merits of accepting manuscripts in preprint, but we also point out challenges that persist, as well as strategies to deal with them.
Why do preprints matter?
In addition to accelerating the circulation of ideas, preprints allow authors to receive feedback quickly, even before submission to peer-reviewed journals. This contributes to greater transparency and stimulates academic dialogue. Although journals like DADOS adopt open science practices, allowing identification of authors and reviewers, traditional peer review is still preferred by most authors.
This approach, however, proves especially advantageous at the beginning of a career, as evidenced by the study On the Value of Preprints: An Early Career Researcher Perspective (SARABIPOUR et al., 2019), as it expands the visibility and recognition of research projects right in the initial phases of the academic trajectory.
Another positive aspect of preprints is their ability to attract more readers and online mentions (RIEGER, 2020), due to their nature open to discussion and potential for dissemination on digital platforms, which contributes to a faster and more accessible reach of research.
Growth and concrete cases
The adoption of preprints has been growing significantly. The SciELO Preprints server, for example, already brings together more than 3,800 articles, 1,000 of them from the humanities. In DADOS, this practice is still in its initial phase. So far, three articles published in the journal have followed this path:
La Intensificación Negociada (vol. 64, no. 3, 2021), by Nicolás Ratto, analyzes how union mobilization at Walmart Chile reversed precarious practices, transforming a despotic regime into a segmented model, with better conditions and encouragement for unionization.
Education Inequalities in Contemporary Brazil: Definition, Measurement, and Outcomes (vol. 68, no. 1, 2025), by Mauricio Ernica and Erica Castilho Rodrigues, proposes an indicator to measure inequalities in elementary education learning in Brazil, revealing that advances in some subjects came accompanied by increased socioeconomic, racial and gender disparities.
The diversity of studies presented illustrates how preprints enable the dissemination of research on different topics and approaches. Despite advances, the transition to truly open science is still gradual.
For DADOS, however, the incorporation of preprints reflects a continuous commitment to innovation and democratization of knowledge, without abandoning academic rigor. Potential problems should be analyzed based on concrete evidence as preprint publication becomes more widespread in the Social Sciences. In this aspect, we highlight the role of DADOS in defending the system alongside congresses of the main associations in the field. Thanks to this, the National Association of Graduate Studies in Social Sciences (Associação Nacional de Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais, ANPOCS) decided in 2022 to encourage papers submitted to its annual meeting to be previously made available on preprint servers, a practice with growing adherence.
To read the articles, access
BEIGEL, F., et al. OLIVA: The Scientific output in journals edited in Latin America. Disciplinary Diversity, Institutional Collaboration, and Multilingualism in SciELO and Redalyc (1995-2018). Dados rev. ciênc. sociais [online]. 2024, vol. 67, no. 1, e20210174 [viewed 05 August 2025]. https://doi.org/10.1590/dados.2024.67.1.307x. Available from: https://www.scielo.br/j/dados/a/XxLf5wmZBw97k8yGdbvGDvh
2. Brierley, et al. (2021) highlight the risks associated with preprints, especially in the field of health, such as reduced scientific credibility and the potential spread of misinformation, whether intentional or not.
COSTA, M.G. Por que a demora? O processo editorial dos artigos aprovados em DADOS [online]. Blog da DADOS, 2022 [viewed 05 August 2025]. Available from: https://dados.iesp.uerj.br/por-que-a-demora/
RIEGER, O.Y. (2020) Preprints in the Spotlight: Establishing Best Practices, Building Trust [online]. ITHAKA S+R. 2020 [viewed 05 August 2025]. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep49517
LISBÔA, D. DADOS and Preprints: Advances Towards a More Open Science [online]. SciELO in Perspective: Humanities, 2025 [viewed ]. Available from: https://humanas.blog.scielo.org/en/2025/08/05/dados-and-preprints-advances-towards-a-more-open-science/
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