This presentation was provided by Leslie McIntosh of Ripeta, during the NISO hot topic event "Preprints." The virtual conference was held on April 21, 2021.

1. Improving the quality of pre-prints with
automated checks

2. Leslie
McIntosh, PhD
Ripeta, founder and CEO
@ripetaReview

3. What’s Happening in Preprints?

4. What’s happening in preprints?
No standard way of reporting or
removing preprints
32 Retracted + 3 ‘Letters of
Concern’ from Covid preprints
Still exploring checks
Automating checks

5. Automation in Preprints

6. Will authors
improve
manuscripts?

7. Ripeta, LLC. All rights reserved. This is not to be shared without official permission.
ripetaReview

8. Ripeta, LLC. All rights reserved. This is not to be shared without official permission.
ripetaReview Quality
review of
one paper
ripetaReview

9. Ripeta, LLC. All rights reserved. This is not to be shared without official permission.
ripetaReview
Sample ripetaReview
Research Quality
Study Objective: Yes
Professionalism
ID: Confirmed with ORCID
Funding Statement: Yes
Reproducibility
DAS: Yes
Data Location: In paper
Code Availability: No
Data Location
Result: Text found
The data used to support the findings of this study are included
within the article.
Recommendations: Please consider depositing data and
materials into an accessible repository. Having data easily
accessible has shown to increase the number of citations to
your article. This also assists in making your work
reproducible.
Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19
Susceptibility
DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096
Results
Feedback

10. Will authors
improve
manuscripts?
(ResearchSquare)
33% of authors
corrected and re-
uploaded their
preprint

11. Can quality
papers be
quickly
identified?

12. Ripeta, LLC. All rights reserved. This is not to be shared without official permission.
ripetaReport

13. Ripeta, LLC. All rights reserved. This is not to be shared without official permission.
ripetaReport Report of
Portfolio of
Publications
Sample ripetaReport (Wellcome Trust)

14. ripetaReporting

15. Can quality
papers be
quickly
identified?
(Covid preprints)

16. Automation in Preprints

17. Quality
Indicators
Research
Professionalism
Reproducibility
info@ripeta.com

18. Research
Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility
DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096
Here, we investigated the relationship between the ABO blood type
and the susceptibility to COVID-19 in patients from three hospitals in
Wuhan and Shenzhen, China to test if the former may be a biomarker
for the latter.
Study Objective
Scientific
Headings
Abstracts, Background/Introduction, Methods

19. Professionalism

20. Reproducibility
Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility
DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096
Data Availability
The data used to support the findings of this study are included within the article.
Data Availability
The data used to support the findings of this study are included within the article.
{Not Found}
Data Availability
Statement
Data Location
Code Availability

21. Can automation
save time?

22. Covid Preprint
Analyses
ripetaScore Outcome Citations
Similarity nCoV spike protein
10.1101/2020.01.30.927871 Low Withdrawn 50
Hydroxychloroquine
10.1101/2020.03.16.20037135 Medium Questioned 3000
ABO Blood Group
10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096
Medium Overhyped 150
Potential vaccine targets
10.1101/2020.02.03.933226 High Published 450

23. Article DOI Study
Purpose
Author-
ship
Funding
Statement
Data
location
DAS Code
availability
10.1101/2020.01.30.927871 Yes 2 No None No No
Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike
protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag
Methodology
Retrieval and alignment of nucleic acid and protein sequences
We retrieved all the available coronavirus sequences (n=55) from NCBI viral
genome database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and we used the GISAID (Elbe
& Buckland-Merrett, 2017)[https://www.gisaid.org/] to retrieve all available full-
length sequences (n=28) of 2019-nCoV as on 27 Jan 2020. Multiple sequence
alignment of all coronavirus genomes was performed by using MUSCLE
software (Edgar, 2004) based on neighbour joining method. Out of 55
coronavirus genome 32 representative genomes of all category were used for
phylogenetic tree development using MEGAX software (Kumar et al., 2018). The
closest relative was found to be SARS CoV.

24. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an
open-label non-randomized clinical trial
Article DOI Study
Purpose
Author-
ship
Funding
Statement
Data
location
DAS Code
availability
10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020
.105949
Yes 1 Yes None No No
Elisabeth Bik took a close look at the IJAA article and
detailed a long list of serious problems with the study,
including questions about its ethical underpinnings, messy
confounding variables, missing patients, rushed and
conflicted peer review, and confusing data.

25. Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility
Article DOI Study
Purpose
Author-
ship
Funding
Statement
Data
location
DAS Code
availability
10.1101/2020.03.11.200310
96
Yes 4 Yes In paper Yes No

26. Preliminary identification of potential vaccine targets for the COVID-19
coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) based on SARS-CoV immunological studies
Article DOI Study
Purpose
Author-
ship
Funding
Statement
Data
location
DAS Code
availability
10.1101/2020.02.03.933226 Yes 4 Yes External
repo
Yes Yes

27. Can automation
save time?
(SpringerNature &
bioRxiv/medRxiv Preprints)
4 minutes
instead of 40 hours
to check 400+
manuscripts

28. Does automation
solve all problems?

29. Automated checks
can make
better science easier
Follow us @RipetaReview for more memes

30. Follow us for weekly
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Informed

31. Leslie McIntosh
CEO
Cynthia Hudson
Vitale
COO, co-founder
Chris Westling
Data Engineer
Ruth Whittam
Data Scientist,
Lead
Josh Sumner
Data Scientist,
Intern
Leah Haynes
Data Scientist,
Intern
ripetinis
Paola Ortega
Saborío
Data Engineer
August
DeVore
Editor

32. ripeta.com
info@ripeta.com
Appendix

33. ripetaData Research Professionalism Reproducibility
Open Access Ethical Approval Statement Data Availability Statements
Abstract Ethical Approval Organization Data Locations - Repository
Study Objective Author Contribution Statement Data Locations - PID
Funding Statement Competing Interests Data Locations - Identifiers
Funding Source Funding Source Data Locations - URL
Funding Grant ID Funding Grant ID Analysis Software
Count of Authors (single) Analysis Software Version
Self-Citations Statistical Methods
Author Identification Code Availability Statement