Science communication faces opportunities and challenges in the context of COVID-19. There has been an increase in public interest in scientific research during the pandemic (1, 2). These needs, however, cannot be met by traditional models of science communication. Science communication used to involving scientists publishing their findings in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and then distributing them to the general public through journalistic reporting. While the publication process is slow for scholarly journals, peer-reviewed journals in the fields of public health and medicine, for example, have a publication cycle of ~3 months (3). Publication lag times became a serious problem during the pandemic. According to one study, SARS ended before 93% of the SARS studies were published (4).

Preprint platforms are a new means of disseminating scientific research. They provide rapid dissemination, citation advantage, receiving feedback, and so on. Therefore, they are regarded as an accelerator of scholarly communication (5–7). Preprints are becoming increasingly popular in various disciplines, such as life sciences (8), mathematics (6), and information sciences (9).

Preprints have become an important tool in meeting these challenges. Researchers upload them on the preprint platform without any peer review. Preprints are usually published before the formal publication process. They are an important scholarly communication tool during the pandemic because of their rapid publication speed and that they are open access (10–12).

Preprints were generally well-received by scientists, but there are concerns about their use for public scientific communication. Preprints can be an efficient means of delivering information to the public. Meanwhile, inappropriate dissemination of preprints can have serious consequences (13). As preprints are not peer-reviewed, quality problems can arise, causing confusion and panic among the public. A paper published on bioRxiv suggested that the COVID-19 virus was genetically engineered because it is similar to HIV. It received widespread public attention, with some citing it as evidence that COVID-19 is a biological weapon (12, 14)¹.

In this context, we need to examine the role of preprints in disseminating COVID-19 research to the public.

Scientific research results are increasingly being covered in the mass media (15). Both science news and non-science news are increasingly reporting papers from scholarly journals (16, 17). Over 99% of scientific papers covered by mass media are related to health and medicine (18–20).

There are two main perspectives on the mass media's coverage of scientific papers. One is from a bibliometrics perspective, examining whether mass media distribution can increase the number of citations of the papers (21, 22). The other concern is the accuracy of reporting. Researchers have questioned the reliability of news coverage of academic content in the mass media, stating that between half and 90% of news coverage has problems (23, 24). These problems include omitting contextual information (15, 25), exaggerated conclusions (26), and misleading causal claims (27), which are widespread across a wide range of fields (28, 29).

COVID-19 has led to an unprecedented use of preprints (12, 30). They are seen to accelerate the dissemination of scientific discoveries in response to infectious disease outbreaks (31). Preprints related to COVID-19 have increased more than 100-fold compared to research on other viruses (32).

In addition, COVID-19 prompts the dissemination of preprints beyond the academic community to the wider public (13). Many mainstream journalists have to report on preprints due to the pandemic, which has even become a frequent practice (33–35). While the role of preprints was well-recognized within the academic community, their dissemination to the public raised concerns. Journalists often consider preprints that have not been peer-reviewed as reliable sources of information, and the reporting process follows that of peer-reviewed articles (34, 36). Since it is difficult for non-scientists to distinguish between preprints and peer-reviewed papers, this can lead to confusion and distortion, ultimately resulting in fake news, conspiracy theories, and extremist ideologies (13, 37–39).

Studies focusing on reporting preprints in mass media within the context of the pandemic can be divided into two categories. First, a qualitative approach focuses primarily on experience, summarizing the news reporting practices of preprints by journalists. They explain why preprint coverage has become so extensive and the problems associated with the reporting practice (33, 35, 40).

Second, empirical studies are conducted. Fleerackers et al. examine the reporting of preprints in 15 media outlets (41). Some studies examine preprint coverage across specialized regions, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa. These studies provide an analytical frame for preprint coverage and indicate the proportion of preprints that are not correctly reported, ranging from 27.6 to 59% (42–44).

Together these studies provide important insights into how preprints are communicated to the public. This paper expands on existing research in four ways. First, an empirical study is conducted to investigate whether and how the pandemic has led to wider dissemination of preprints. Secondly, the study sample was selected based on the preprints published on preprint platforms that failed to appear in peer-reviewed journals. Some preprint papers are eventually published in peer-reviewed journals, while previous studies have often failed to make this distinction, and such confusion can affect the accuracy of conclusions. This distinction is important because papers that do not undergo peer review are more likely to have quality issues, and the potential consequences of inaccurate reporting of these papers could be severe. As a result, this study will focus on preprints that do not ultimately appear in peer-reviewed journals. Thirdly, this paper will explore what factors influence the inaccurate reporting of preprints. Lastly, it examines data from social media compared to the mass media.

In this paper, we address the following research questions:

This study aims to examine how the preprints are disseminated to the public in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It employs content analysis and statistical analysis to investigate the dissemination of preprints on the preprint platforms medRxiv and bioRxiv. The findings of this study are as follows.

The public's awareness of preprints has increased dramatically in the pandemic, especially for the preprints related to COVID-19. In the following analysis, the preprints published after 2020 are grouped as relevant and irrelevant for the COVID-19 content, as shown in Table 4.

COVID-19-related preprints are more widely disseminated than non-COVID-19 content, as shown in Table 4. This is evident from the fact that the mean (4.059 vs. 0.159, 114.353 vs. 16.221, respectively) and median (0 vs. 0, 10 vs. 7, respectively) of the COVID-19-related preprints on news and Twitter are both greater than or equal to the non-COVID-19-related preprints. It appears that news media coverage favors COVID-19 preprint content. The medians for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 in the news media were 0.0/0.0. The test resulted in a P-value of 0.000^***, indicating a significant difference between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 in the news media. The magnitude of the difference, as measured by Cohen's d, was 0.389, indicating a small difference.

The medians for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 on Twitter were 7.0/10.0. The test resulted in a P-value of 0.000^***, indicating a significant difference between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 on Twitter. The magnitude of the difference, as measured by Cohen's d, was 0.266, indicating a small difference. Furthermore, this table suggests that content related to COVID-19 may have larger maximum values. This means that some preprint papers related to COVID-19 may receive a relatively high degree of public exposure.

Table 5 shows that 33% of COVID-19-related preprints were mentioned in the news at least once at an early stage of the epidemic, whereas only 11% of non-COVID-19 preprints were mentioned at least once at the same time. Regarding social media shown Table 5, 99.90% of COVID-19-related preprints received at least two tweet mentions, compared to 95% for non-COVID-19 preprints⁶.

It shows that the correlation coefficient between news media and TWITTER is 0.538 at a 0.01 level of significance, indicating a significant positive correlation between news and TWITTER. The result suggests a strong similarity in the perspective of public attention.

While on the other hand, the epidemic has a greater impact on the dissemination of preprints in the news media than on social media. The change in preprint distribution in the news media is greater than the change in social media after the epidemic. In addition, the difference in the number of COVID-19-related preprints and non-COVID-19 preprints disseminated was also greater in the news media than in social media.

A significant number of preprint papers are not accurately reported by the news media. Half of the news stories fail to mention the preprint frame, which means that readers would regard it as the same as a peer-reviewed paper. And those papers that do mention the preprint frame often lack further explanation.

Figure 1 shows that 49% of the news reports do not mention any preprint frame, which means that readers would regard it as the same as a peer-reviewed paper.

Figure 2 presents the number of reports that adopted a particular preprint frame. As shown in the figure, the most commonly used approach was mentioning the preprint status of the paper, with 192 (41% of) reports adopting this approach. The second most frequently used approach was mentioning the preliminary nature of the study, with 107 (23% of) reports adopting this approach. Only 70 (15% of) reports mentioned the non-peer-reviewed status of the study. It is clear that the news coverage of the preprint is not accurate.

The media's content characteristics are more likely to influence its coverage of the preprint than the media's type characteristics.

Figures 3, 4 show the media sources. In media type, more than half of the content is published in digital native media and 39% in legacy media. While in terms of media content, the majority is published in general news media.

The results of the chi-square test (cross-tabulation) presented in Table 6 indicate a significant (p < 0.05) relationship between media type and preprint frame adoption scores. This suggests that the different media type samples show a difference in preprint frame adoption.

Figure 5 demonstrates the preprint frame adoption scores of the different media types. We can see from the Figure that digital native news platforms have the highest preprint frame adoption scores, with both legacy media and news aggregators below. And this indicates that digital native platforms are more accurate in reporting preprints.

The results of the chi-square test presented in Table 7 indicate a significant (p < 0.05) relationship between media content and preprint frame adoption scores. This suggests that the different media content samples show a difference in preprint frame adoption.

Figure 6 illustrates the preprint frame adoption scores of different media content. As can be seen, medical, scientific, and biological categories have scores, which means they report preprints more accurately. While for general news and business news, they are less able to accurately report preprint content.

In conclusion, legacy media performs less well in this area than digital native media when measured by the preprint frame adoption score. As we explore further, we can find that digital-native media have higher adoption scores because most medical and scientific content is published on digital platforms. To some extent, therefore, we can assume that media content influences preprint coverage quality more than media type.

Preprints have become an important source of information during the COVID-19 pandemic as the public demands quicker access to scientific information. This paper explores the current state of communication of preprints in the public sphere to help better understand the changing picture of science communication during the pandemic. In this way, we may be able to better respond to public health emergencies and maintain public confidence in the media and science.

The findings of this paper show that the COVID-19 pandemic has indeed increased the exposure of preprints in the public eye, suggesting the emergence of a new model of science communication. In previous models of science communication, scientists conducted research, published their findings in peer-reviewed journals through a long publication process, and then communicated their findings to the public in journalistic reports. This paper finds that the epidemic has changed this model, resulting in more scientific discoveries being disseminated into the public domain through preprinted papers. Several previous studies have shown that journalists have relied more on preprint as a source of news coverage due to the immediacy and ease of accessibility (33, 35). It is believed that journalists and the media are “knowledge brokers” who bridge the gap between science and society (53, 54). With the introduction of preprints into mainstream media under the pandemic, accuracy in reporting ongoing scientific research has implications for public trust in science and media, and science communication should therefore pay attention to this topic.

This study reveals that the overall media coverage of preprints is unsatisfactory, whereas digital native news media, particularly those specialized news media, possess higher reporting standards than legacy media. According to the study, only half of the news stories mentioned the preprint nature of the papers covered, and most failed to explain what that means. Comparing this result with previous similar studies, the proportion of stories that are not correctly reported is higher (42–44).

This study focuses on preprint papers that were not ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals. Previous research has primarily focused on all preprint papers, so it is likely that the papers in our sample have some qualitative differences in content compared to those that were included in previous studies. If a significant proportion of these preprint papers contain errors in their reports, it could have serious consequences. This underscores the need to improve the quality of these reports.

In addition, this paper found that digital native news media performed better than legacy media in reporting preprints accurately, which offers new ideas for reshaping the structure of science communication. Much of the previous literature on science communication coverage has focused on legacy or social media, with relatively little attention paid to digital native media (55–57). With science journalism declining in legacy media in recent years (58), the conclusions of this paper demonstrate the need to pay special attention to the role of digital native media in science communication, which appears to be a viable strategy for reshaping science communication (59, 60).

The findings of this study contribute to understanding how science communication has evolved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, in terms of the sources of science communication, it is essential to note that preprints are being widely disseminated to the general public. Secondly, it is necessary to improve the quality of reporting of preprints in the mass media. Finally, it is crucial to recognize the increasing importance of digital native media, especially when science journalism is declining in legacy media. Overall, this study indicates that public health emergencies significantly impact science communication.

Based on the findings, the following practical recommendations are made.

Science communication is challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, and preprints serve as an effective tool to address this issue. Throughout this paper, we examine the current state of preprint communication in public view to better understand how science communication has evolved in the context of public health emergencies. Additionally, the paper provides practical suggestions for reporting preprints, which can help promote trust both in science and in the media.

Some limitations exist in this study. Firstly, the content analysis of the coverage on preprints focuses only on the English-language media and therefore lacks a broader global perspective. In addition, only reporting of preprints at the early stages of the pandemic was examined, ignoring the possibility that the reporting of preprints could change as the pandemic progresses. Therefore, future research could expand the scope of this study in terms of language and time. Finally, future research could examine changes in audiences' attitudes and behavior following exposure to preprint reports.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.