Research is most valuable when it is shared, and preprints make that possible without delay. They allow researchers to circulate new ideas openly, rapidly, and globally, inviting collaboration and feedback long before the traditional publication cycle is complete.
As part of our Researcher Voices series, we spoke with Dr. Jonathan H. Westover, Associate Dean and Director of HR Undergraduate and Graduate Academic Programs at Western Governors University. As a widely published scholar in social sciences, he has recently embraced preprints to amplify the reach and timeliness of his work.
About Dr. Jonathan H. Westover
Dr. Jonathan H. Westover is currently Associate Dean at Western Governors University and was previously Professor and Chair of Organizational Leadership at Utah Valley University, where he also served as Academic Director of the Center for Social Impact. His research explores leadership, human resources, the future of work, and cross-cultural dynamics. As an award-winning author, consultant, and podcast host, he is dedicated to bridging research and practice to build more inclusive and resilient workplaces.
In this conversation, Dr. Westover reflects on:
- Why preprints help him bypass the slow cycle of traditional publishing and prioritize impact over prestige.
- How “legacy mindset” in the social sciences still slows preprint adoption, compared to STEM fields, where rapid dissemination is the norm.
- What led him to Preprints.org for a credible, community-centered platform for sharing research at scale.
- How do we shift mindsets and normalize preprints in the same way conference presentations already do.
Watch the full interview to hear Dr. Westover’s perspective on accelerating research through preprints.
This video was produced by Encyclopedia, which offers an Academic Video Service to help researchers share their work in an accessible and engaging way. We also upload our Preprints.org “Researcher Voices” interviews to Encyclopedia. Follow our collection there to discover more accessible and engaging researcher stories.
Here’s the full text of our conversation with Dr. Westover.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of Preprints.org. As part of our mission to share early research quickly, openly, and globally, we encourage open dialogue and welcome diverse perspectives.
On what motivated him to start posting preprints this year
I think you mentioned many of the benefits. I think the transparency of going through the research development and revision process is something that hasn’t traditionally been very visible across academia. That’s certainly been a nice feature, a nice bonus.
Honestly, when I first became aware of preprints, I was vaguely aware of it before, but I had always just submitted directly to academic journals for peer review, and that process can take so long. So you’re working on a project, and even if it hits with that first journal that you submit to, it could take a year or more, maybe a couple of years even, depending on the journal and the level of the journal. And if it doesn’t hit with that journal, you could wait a year before you have a rejection in hand and are ready to move on to the next journal.
In the meantime, the research that you’re doing is not impacting anyone or seeing the light of day. Over time, as I’ve moved along in my career and I’ve become less concerned about the traditional model of academic publishing. There are issues with the academic publishing model and with rankings of journals and all those sorts of things, and over time, I’ve just become pretty much completely disinterested in playing that game.
I’ve received tenure. I’m a full professor. I don’t really need to play that game. I just want to do good research and to make an impact and be able to move the various fields for that I’m involved in. So getting rapid dissemination via preprints is super helpful, and it’s transparent, and you don’t have to, it obviously can will hopefully lead to just eventual peer review and publication of all these articles that I might upload as a preprint, but if not, that’s fine. If it takes a long time for it to land as a peer-reviewed article, just because the process takes a long time, then that’s fine too, because it still has the opportunity to have that impact. That’s probably the biggest reason why it was something that I was interested in doing.
I don’t know if this is the case for other researchers, but I do a lot of work and have projects, and I start to have a backlog of stuff. There’s only so much you can push out to academic journals for peer review all the time because that is an extensive, time-consuming process in and of itself. Set aside just doing the good research, but now you have to navigate the journals and the reviews and the revisions and all those sorts of things, all of which are important. But it’s a lot of work. So I want to be able to get my ideas out there. I want to be able to get my work out there. In some cases, I want to be able to stake a claim to work that I’m doing to show that I’m being innovative and pushing the field forward, and preprints help. I think to do all of that in a more timely manner, so that you’re not stuck in the traditional long cycle of peer review and traditional academic journals.
On why are life sciences more open to preprints in general, and why are people in the social sciences hesitating?
It’s a good question, and I don’t really know the answer. For me, I had never really considered preprints. There had been on occasion I had posted a working paper to a repository, which is essentially what preprints are, but I’d only done that on a few occasions and often with things that I didn’t actually think we’re going to ever be publishable. There were just different types of working papers or things like that that weren’t necessarily at that tier or that level of work. So it wasn’t something I really ever thought much about.
Whenever you submit to a journal, a lot of journals will say this can’t be considered anywhere else. So I think a lot of people simply don’t think it’s a viable option. The more I looked into it, actually, some journals do have strict policies around preprints, but a lot don’t, and in fact, a lot are totally fine with and encourage preprint posting of drafts of articles.
The more I started to look into that, I see the benefits, which are all the things I just mentioned. The downside is really not much of any unless there are certain journals or certain tiers of journals that, if you’re only shooting for those, perhaps it could be a limitation by posting a preprint. But for the most part, there’s just a lot of benefits and there’s not a lot of downside.
So I figured I might as well try it out. So I started dabbling as I started to submit my initial preprints just to see. I was kind of testing the waters, and sure enough, all of a sudden, you start to get momentum with collaborations or with citations or things like that, long before I ever would be able to even think about that, waiting for the traditional cycle. I think for a lot of academics, it’s not kind of the traditional model and the traditional workflow. So I think a lot of people don’t really consider it as a viable option, or don’t even know that it’s available as a viable option.
I think there’s also, you mentioned the length to publication, the peer review, timeline, and process. There are definitely debates around publishing, and a lot of skepticism around more rapid publishing when the peer review process is sped up.
Sometimes people see that as a signal that that’s not a viable, credible journal, and that certainly can be the case. It certainly can be the case that it’s a predatory journal or not a real journal or something like that. But I’ve been a reviewer for lots of journals over the years. I don’t think that there’s necessarily any direct connection between time to publication and peer review timeline, versus the rigor of the peer review process and those sorts of things. It’s more about the internal control mechanisms of the journal, the Editorial board policies, those sorts of things. Those are what make the difference and not necessarily the timeline. If I want rapid dissemination, I have found that it can actually be completely reasonable to have good quality, rigorous peer review and get things published even within a month or two in completely legitimate ways. Yet there’s a lot of skepticism around that still, because that’s a shift in the mindset.
And I think in the humanities, the social sciences, I just think that that legacy mindset is very strong, and engineering or very STEM fields, they just have a track record of more rapid dissemination, and so I think something like preprints just makes sense and fits within that mindset easier.
Looking for preprint platforms; why Preprints.org?
I wanted something credible and that allowed for all the types of collaborative interactions that you mentioned previously. You can post working papers anywhere, and so I could have done that on my own, like a research website or something like that. But having the community of researchers available at scale, I think is really important for the purpose of preprints and so having the opportunity you know to get preprint articles indexed and within this broader academic community, I think all that was certainly something I was looking for and something I was testing out and something I think that has really come to fruition as I’ve done more with preprints.
Strategies to help engage the community and raise awareness of benefits
I just think awareness efforts are important. Doing things like research webinars hosted by preprints with researchers who have submitted the stuff, I think that could be super helpful. You get people to share what they’re doing, and people can see this is actually really good research. It’s really no different than if you go to a conference, sometimes people think it’s not peer reviewed, yet, therefore, it’s not ready for prime time yet? Like people submit stuff to conferences and go and present on their research that is not yet published all the time, right? That’s like the whole conference framework and way that it’s always worked in academia. And so I think if people can start to understand that preprints are similar to it’s a way that you can engage with your community, maybe asynchronously, but have some synchronous opportunities. Get your work out there, get it citable, allow opportunities for feedback, all of that.
People can start to recognize that you don’t necessarily have to pay a huge amount. For conference registration, travel somewhere across the world to go present to a room full of people, or a small, maybe a handful of people, in a room when you can. There’s value there, but there’s also just value in getting your work out for people to review and to share it that way. So I would love to see more like robust sharing opportunities through live virtual sessions, webinars, that kind of stuff. I think that would certainly help, and I really do think this perception will catch up to the reality of the benefits, but it just takes time to shift the mindsets and to increase awareness.
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