bioRxiv: the preprint server for biology

Abstract

The traditional publication process delays dissemination of new research, often by months, sometimes by years. Preprint servers decouple dissemination of research papers from their evaluation and certification by journals, allowing researchers to share work immediately, receive feedback from a much larger audience, and provide evidence of productivity long before formal publication. Launched in 2013 as a non-profit community service, the bioRxiv server has brought preprint practice to the life sciences and recently posted its 64,000th manuscript. The server now receives more than four million views per month and hosts papers spanning all areas of biology. Initially dominated by evolutionary biology, genetics/genomics and computational biology, bioRxiv has been increasingly populated by papers in neuroscience, cell and developmental biology, and many other fields. Changes in journal and funder policies that encourage preprint posting have helped drive adoption, as has the development of bioRxiv technologies that allow authors to transfer papers easily between the server and journals. A bioRxiv user survey found that 42% of authors post their preprints prior to journal submission whereas 37% post concurrently with journal submission. Authors are motivated by a desire to share work early; they value the feedback they receive, and very rarely experience any negative consequences of preprint posting. Rapid dissemination via bioRxiv is also encouraging new initiatives that experiment with the peer review process and the development of novel approaches to literature filtering and assessment.

Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals

“…The majority of researchers are disincentivised from preprinting if a journal does not 50 accept preprinted submissions (59% of 392 respondents to ASAPbio survey, 2016, https://asapbio.org/survey). In reality, the majority of preprints posted to arXiv and bioRxiv end up being published in a range of journals (Klein et al, 2019;Sever et al, 2019), and the graduate student can easily look up whether a specific journal would accept preprinted submissions using SHERPA/RoMEO 1 . The acceptance and adoption of preprints varies between disciplines: while 55 established in several fields of physics (Elmore, 2018;Ginsparg, 2016), computer science, and mathematics, adoption in the life sciences (e.g.…”

International authorship and collaboration across bioRxiv preprints

“…Second, we found numerous country-level differences in preprint outcomes. Differences in downloads per paper have the most straightforward interpretation: If one of the goals of preprinting one’s work is to solicit feedback from the community (Sarabipour et al 2019; Sever et al 2019), more “reads” of a preprint may represent an increased probability of receiving helpful feedback, or at least increased exposure to other researchers in the field. The sources and implications of these disparities are an open question: What is the effect of Dutch preprints receiving a median of 368.5 downloads per preprint, while Brazilian preprints receive 220?…”

Evaluating features of scientific conferences: A call for improvements

“…the same manuscript being submitted to a journal). BioRxiv and medRxiv currently host in excess of 70,000 manuscripts combined, receiving over 4 million views per month (87). Preprints are used at an increasing rate in various fields and are already benefiting life scientists at large (84-87), but are underutilized and can be used in new ways to aid career development and increase the efficiency of scientific research (88,84).…”