Current guidance for using preprints in gene curation
It has recently come to our attention that the National Library of Medicine has been piloting the use of Pubmed PMIDs for preprints from certain servers (bioRxiv, medRxiv, others).
Adding preprints as evidence to the GCI via PMIDs was never an intended use case of the current GCI’s PMID functionality. Addition of evidence via PMID is intended for peer-reviewed published evidence only.
Until the NLM pilot is guaranteed to be supported past the pilot phase, we are asking all users: please do not add PMIDs belonging to preprints to the GCI.
If a preprint contains data that is deemed clinically relevant for curation by expert panels:
If scoreable: Note that the use of preprint data as evidence should be an extremely rare use case included at the GCEP’s discretion. Include preprint data in the evidence summary and manually adjust the classification if it is impacted by the inclusion of preprint evidence.
If non-scoreable: please do not include the pre-print data in the evidence summary.
We plan to develop support for the addition of preprints as evidence via DOIs (not PMIDs), and will share updated guidance about this feature in a future version of the GCI.