On 2017 May 24, Jordan Anaya commented:

I think readers of this article will be interested in a comment I posted at F1000Research, which reads:

I would like to clarify and/or raise some issues with this article and accompanying comments.

One: Reviewers Prachee Avasthi and Cynthia Wolberger both emphasized the importance of being able to sort by date, and in response the article was edited to say: "Currently, the search.bioPreprint default search results are ordered by relevance without any option to re-sort by date. The authors are aware of the pressing need for this added feature and if possible will incorporate it into the next version of the search tool."

However, it has been nearly a year and this feature has not been added.

Two: The article states: "Until the creation of search.bioPreprint there has been no simple and efficient way to identify biomedical research published in a preprint format..."

This is simply not true as Google Scholar indexes preprints. This was pointed out by Prachee Avasthi and in response the authors edited the text to include an incorrect method for finding preprints with Google Scholar. In a previous comment I pointed out how to correctly search for preprints with Google Scholar, and it appears the authors read the comment given they utilize the method at this page on their site: http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/gspreprints

Three: In his comment the author states: "We want to stress that the 'Sort by date' feature offered by Google Scholar (GS) is abysmal. It drastically drops the number of retrieved articles compared to the default search results."

This feature of Google Scholar is indeed limited, as it restricts the results to articles which were published in the past year. However, if the goal is to find recent preprints then this limitation shouldn't be a problem and I don't know that I would classify the feature as "abysmal".

Four: The article states: "As new preprint servers are introduced, search.bioPreprint will incorporate them and continue to provide a simple solution for finding preprint articles."

New preprint servers have been introduced, such as preprints.org and Wellcome Open Research, but search.biopreprint has not incorporated them.

Five: Prachee Avasthi pointed out that the search.biopreprint search engine cannot find this F1000Research article about search.biopreprint. It only finds the bioRxiv version. In response the author stated: "The Health Sciences Library System’s quality check team has investigated this issue and is working on a solution. We anticipate a quick fix of this problem."

This problem has not been fixed.

Competing Interests: I made and operate http://www.prepubmed.org/, which is another tool for searching for preprints.

On 2017 May 24, Jordan Anaya commented:

I think readers of this article will be interested in a comment I posted at F1000Research, which reads:

I would like to clarify and/or raise some issues with this article and accompanying comments.

One: Reviewers Prachee Avasthi and Cynthia Wolberger both emphasized the importance of being able to sort by date, and in response the article was edited to say: "Currently, the search.bioPreprint default search results are ordered by relevance without any option to re-sort by date. The authors are aware of the pressing need for this added feature and if possible will incorporate it into the next version of the search tool."

However, it has been nearly a year and this feature has not been added.

Two: The article states: "Until the creation of search.bioPreprint there has been no simple and efficient way to identify biomedical research published in a preprint format..."

This is simply not true as Google Scholar indexes preprints. This was pointed out by Prachee Avasthi and in response the authors edited the text to include an incorrect method for finding preprints with Google Scholar. In a previous comment I pointed out how to correctly search for preprints with Google Scholar, and it appears the authors read the comment given they utilize the method at this page on their site: http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/gspreprints

Three: In his comment the author states: "We want to stress that the 'Sort by date' feature offered by Google Scholar (GS) is abysmal. It drastically drops the number of retrieved articles compared to the default search results."

This feature of Google Scholar is indeed limited, as it restricts the results to articles which were published in the past year. However, if the goal is to find recent preprints then this limitation shouldn't be a problem and I don't know that I would classify the feature as "abysmal".

Four: The article states: "As new preprint servers are introduced, search.bioPreprint will incorporate them and continue to provide a simple solution for finding preprint articles."

New preprint servers have been introduced, such as preprints.org and Wellcome Open Research, but search.biopreprint has not incorporated them.

Five: Prachee Avasthi pointed out that the search.biopreprint search engine cannot find this F1000Research article about search.biopreprint. It only finds the bioRxiv version. In response the author stated: "The Health Sciences Library System’s quality check team has investigated this issue and is working on a solution. We anticipate a quick fix of this problem."

This problem has not been fixed.

Competing Interests: I made and operate http://www.prepubmed.org/, which is another tool for searching for preprints.