The Impact of Preprints on the Citations of Journal Articles Related to COVID-19

To investigate the impact of preprints on the citation counts of COVID-19-related papers, this study compares the number of citations received by drafts initially distributed as preprints and later published in journals with those received by pa-pers directly submitted to journals. The difference in the median number of cita-tions between COVID-19 preprint-distributed papers and COVID-19 directly submitted papers published in 184 journals was tested using the Mann-Whitney U test. The results showed that 129 journals had a statistically significant higher median citation count for COVID-19 preprint-distributed papers compared to di-rectly submitted papers, with a p-value of less than 0.05. In contrast, no journals had a statistically significant higher median citation count for COVID-19 directly submitted papers. This indicates that 70.11% of the journals that published pre-print-distributed papers experienced a significant increase in citations. We also identified that among the 184 journals, 13 journals garnered a substantial number of citations. Among the 74,037 COVID-19 papers, preprint-distributed papers (9,028) accounted for only 12.19%. However, among the 2,015,997 citations re-ceived by COVID-19 papers, preprint-distributed papers garnered 542,715 cita-tions, representing a substantial 26.92%. These results suggest that distributing preprints prior to formal publication may help COVID-19 research reach a wider audience, potentially leading to increased readership and citations.