CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: biorxiv scimago

  • BioRxiv ISSN Explained: Why It’s Not a Journal

    BioRxiv holds ISSN 2692-8205, but an ISSN is a serial-registration number, not proof of peer review. BioRxiv is a preprint repository, not a peer-reviewed journal: it has no Scimago Journal Rank, no Scopus record and no impact factor, because those metrics apply only to indexed journals, and bioRxiv does not perform peer review.

    BioRxiv is an open-access preprint repository for the biological sciences, launched in November 2013 by John Inglis and Richard Sever and now operated by the nonprofit openRxiv. Confusion about its status is common because bioRxiv looks and behaves like a journal platform — it has a citable DOI, a formal ISSN and a Wikipedia entry — while lacking the editorial infrastructure that “indexing” actually measures.

    Does bioRxiv have an ISSN, and what does that prove?

    BioRxiv is registered with ISSN 2692-8205, listed in the ISSN Portal and cross-referenced in the NLM Catalog under record ID 101680187, where the U.S. National Library of Medicine lists its electronic ISSN and title abbreviation “bioRxiv: the preprint server for biology”. An ISSN is issued by the ISSN International Centre to any continuing resource — journals, newspapers, monograph series, and repositories that publish serially.

    Holding an ISSN confirms only that a publication is a recognised, ongoing serial with a stable identity. It carries no implication about peer review, editorial oversight, or scholarly indexing. Many predatory journals and informal newsletters also carry valid ISSNs, which is precisely why the number is frequently mistaken for a quality signal.

    Is bioRxiv indexed in Scimago or Scopus?

    No. Scimago Journal & Country Rank derives its rankings exclusively from the Scopus citation database, which indexes peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and book series — not preprint servers. Because bioRxiv preprints are not peer-reviewed at the point of posting, they fall outside Scopus’s inclusion criteria, and bioRxiv correspondingly has no Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) or quartile ranking.

    Search results that appear to show “bioRxiv” scientometric profiles, such as third-party aggregator pages listing publication and citation counts, are counting citations to the individual preprints hosted on the platform, not a journal-level metric assigned to bioRxiv itself. This distinction matters for anyone assessing where a piece of research sits in the scholarly record.

    ISSN record vs. Scimago-indexed journal
    Attribute bioRxiv (ISSN 2692-8205) Typical Scimago/Scopus-indexed journal
    Peer review before posting No — basic screening only Yes — mandatory
    ISSN Yes Yes
    Scopus/Scimago listing No Yes (if indexed)
    Impact factor / SJR None Assigned annually
    Editorial board with reject/accept decisions No Yes
    DOI registration Yes, via Crossref (prefix 10.1101) Yes, via Crossref or DataCite

    What does bioRxiv’s Wikipedia entry actually describe?

    The Wikipedia article for bioRxiv describes it plainly as “an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences”, founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013 and inspired by arXiv, the physics and mathematics preprint server launched by Paul Ginsparg in 1991. The entry documents bioRxiv’s ownership history in detail: it was hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) until 11 March 2025, when ownership transferred to openRxiv, a newly formed nonprofit created to run bioRxiv and its clinical-sciences counterpart, medRxiv.

    Nowhere does the entry describe bioRxiv as a peer-reviewed journal. It explicitly notes that submissions “undergo a basic scrutinisation process, which includes safeguarding checks, an automated plagiarism screening and an assessment of appropriateness” — a moderation gate, not editorial peer review. The article also cites a 2019 eLife meta-research study (Abdill and Blekhman) finding that roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals, underscoring that bioRxiv functions as a pre-publication staging ground rather than a publication venue in its own right.

    Is bioRxiv a journal, and what does “indexing” really mean?

    BioRxiv is not a journal. In scholarly-communication terms, “indexing” means a database such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed or the Directory of Open Access Journals has evaluated a title against inclusion criteria — regular publication schedule, peer review, editorial governance, ethical standards — and added its articles to a searchable, citation-tracked index. bioRxiv preprints are discoverable and citable via Google Scholar, PubMed Central (in some cases) and their own DOIs, but that is discovery, not journal indexing.

    • ISSN registration confirms serial identity only.
    • DOI registration (via Crossref) confirms a persistent, citable identifier for a specific preprint version.
    • Scopus/Web of Science indexing confirms a journal has passed a database’s editorial and peer-review vetting process.
    • Scimago/impact factor are journal-level citation metrics computed only for indexed journals — bioRxiv has neither.

    The bioRxiv-to-Journals (B2J) initiative, which by May 2020 allowed authors at 177 participating journals to submit a posted preprint directly into a journal’s manuscript system, illustrates the actual relationship: bioRxiv is a feeder and archive that sits upstream of formal, indexed publication, not a substitute for it. For definitions of related scholarly-communication terms, see the CASRAI Dictionary.

    Answer-first Q&A

    Does bioRxiv have an ISSN?

    Yes. BioRxiv holds ISSN 2692-8205, registered with the ISSN International Centre and cross-listed in the NLM Catalog (record 101680187). An ISSN is a serial-identification number confirming bioRxiv is a continuing publication series — it does not certify that content has passed peer review or editorial vetting.

    Is bioRxiv considered a journal?

    No. BioRxiv is a preprint repository, not a peer-reviewed journal. Submissions undergo only basic screening for plagiarism, safeguarding and appropriateness, not scientific peer review. A 2019 eLife study found roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are later published in peer-reviewed journals.

    Is bioRxiv a publisher?

    BioRxiv describes itself as an archive and distribution service, operated by the nonprofit openRxiv since March 2025 (previously hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory). It distributes manuscripts rather than publishing them editorially — authors remain free to submit the same work to a journal afterwards.

    How do you cite bioRxiv?

    Cite bioRxiv preprints using their DOI (prefix 10.1101, registered via Crossref), per bioRxiv’s own FAQ guidance. If multiple versions exist, cite the version-specific URL. ICMJE-aligned journals typically require the citation to flag the work explicitly as a preprint, unlike a peer-reviewed indexed article.

    What this means for authors and institutions

    For research administrators and institutional leaders verifying publication records, the practical takeaway is definitive: a bioRxiv deposit is not equivalent to a peer-reviewed, indexed publication for the purposes of research assessment exercises, promotion dossiers, or funder reporting, regardless of how citable or ISSN-bearing the platform is. Research administration teams verifying publication records for compliance purposes should treat a bioRxiv ISSN or DOI as evidence of deposit and discoverability, not as evidence of peer review or journal-level standing.

    Authors should continue citing bioRxiv preprints by DOI, clearly labelled as preprints, and should track whether a peer-reviewed version has since appeared in an indexed journal — since roughly two-thirds eventually do. Terminology precision matters here: conflating “has an ISSN” with “is indexed” or “is a journal” produces avoidable errors in CVs, grant reports and library catalogues. As preprint servers proliferate across disciplines, the ISSN-versus-indexing distinction bioRxiv illustrates will only become more relevant to how research administrators, publishers and funders classify the scholarly record.

  • bioRxiv Impact Factor: Why It Doesn’t Exist

    bioRxiv does not have an impact factor, and it never will unless its governance model changes: impact factors are calculated only for peer-reviewed journals indexed in Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports, and bioRxiv is a preprint repository, not a journal. The “biorxiv impact factor” search that ~50-70 people run every month reflects a structural misunderstanding, not a missing data point — no amount of waiting will produce one.

    bioRxiv is a free preprint server for the life sciences, operated by the non-profit openRxiv and co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in 2013; it distributes unpublished, non-peer-reviewed manuscripts under persistent DOIs, which is precisely the feature set that disqualifies it from journal-level citation metrics.

    What bioRxiv Is, and Why It Has No Impact Factor

    bioRxiv is a repository, not a periodical: it posts complete but unpublished manuscripts in the biological sciences without editorial peer review, typically within 72 hours of submission. Its own FAQ states this without qualification: “bioRxiv is not a journal so it has no Impact Factor.”

    The confusion is understandable. bioRxiv issues DOIs, assigns subject categories, displays usage metrics, and looks — to a casual visitor — like a journal homepage. But the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a specific, licensed Clarivate product calculated from citation counts to items indexed as “articles” in the Web of Science Core Collection over a two-year window. That calculation requires a defined editorial process and a stable, recurring publication vehicle. A repository that posts author-submitted manuscripts with no acceptance/rejection decision does not meet the definition of a “source publication,” so no JIF can be computed for it, at any citation volume.

    Why Preprint Servers Are Structurally Ineligible for JCR and Scimago

    Both major citation-metric systems apply the same underlying logic, even though they run on different databases. Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports draws only from titles accepted into the Web of Science Core Collection’s journal indexes, and that acceptance process screens for editorial peer review, a named editorial board, regular publication periodicity, and bibliographic standardisation — criteria a preprint repository cannot satisfy by design. Scimago Journal Rank works from Scopus’s source list, which applies an analogous journal/serial-title gate.

    • No editorial acceptance decision — bioRxiv screens submissions for plagiarism, scope, and safety, but does not accept or reject manuscripts on scientific merit, so there is no equivalent of a journal’s editorial board.
    • No fixed publication periodicity — preprints post continuously, not in issues or volumes, which breaks the citation-window model both JCR and Scimago use.
    • Preprints remain mutable — authors can revise a preprint indefinitely until journal publication, unlike a journal’s version of record.

    This is why “biorxiv scimago” searches also return nothing: bioRxiv is absent from Scimago’s journal rankings for the identical structural reason it is absent from JCR, not because of a data-processing gap. medRxiv, bioRxiv’s sister server for health sciences launched in 2019, is ineligible under the same rule set — hence “medrxiv impact factor” is equally unanswerable in the affirmative.

    bioRxiv’s ISSN, DOIs, and the Preprint Citation Index — What the Identifiers Actually Mean

    bioRxiv does hold an ISSN — 2692-8205 — issued because ISSNs are assigned to any continuing serial resource for cataloguing purposes, including repositories, and are unrelated to JIF eligibility. This is a distinction most explainers on this topic skip: an ISSN registers bioRxiv as a citable, ongoing publication series in library catalogues; it does not signal peer review, and it carries no weight in Clarivate’s or Scopus’s source-selection criteria.

    A second, frequently overlooked identifier detail: individual bioRxiv preprints are indexed in Clarivate’s Preprint Citation Index, a distinct Web of Science product launched to track preprint citations separately from the peer-reviewed Core Collection. Being present in the Preprint Citation Index is not the same as JCR eligibility — it is a citation-tracking layer, not a metric-generating one. bioRxiv preprints are also indexed by Crossref, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and Europe PMC, and PubMed indexes preprints of NIH-funded research specifically.

    Attribute Peer-reviewed journal bioRxiv / medRxiv
    Peer review before posting Yes, editorial + referee decision No — screening only, for scope and safety
    JCR / Journal Impact Factor eligible Yes, if indexed in WoS Core Collection No — structurally excluded
    Scimago / SJR eligible Yes, if indexed in Scopus source list No — same structural exclusion
    ISSN Yes, per title Yes — bioRxiv: 2692-8205 (cataloguing only)
    DOI Yes, per article Yes, per preprint version
    Indexed in Web of Science Preprint Citation Index N/A Yes

    What Metrics Actually Apply to bioRxiv and medRxiv Preprints

    bioRxiv publishes per-preprint usage data on each article’s Metrics tab: abstract views and PDF downloads, updated daily, plus altmetric attention scores that aggregate mentions in news, blogs, and social platforms. These sit within the broader altmetrics framework that NISO formalised through its Alternative Assessment Metrics project (NISO RP-25-2020), which set recommended practices for defining and reporting non-citation research metrics.

    There is also downstream evidence linking preprint attention to eventual journal outcomes. A 2019 analysis of all bioRxiv preprints (Abdill & Blekhman, published in eLife and indexed at PMC6510536) found a measurable correlation between a preprint’s bioRxiv download count and the Journal Impact Factor of the journal in which it was later published — useful context, but a correlation about the destination journal, not a metric of the preprint itself.

    • Abstract and PDF views — updated daily on the preprint’s own page.
    • Altmetric attention score — tracks news, policy, and social-media mentions.
    • Citation counts via Crossref/Google Scholar/Semantic Scholar — real citations to the DOI, independent of any journal metric.
    • Eventual journal IF, once published — applies only after the manuscript is accepted by a peer-reviewed title, and belongs to that journal, not to the preprint record.

    Answer-First Q&A

    Does bioRxiv count as published?

    No. Posting on bioRxiv is not formal publication; it is a preliminary, non-peer-reviewed manuscript. Most journals do not treat a preprint as prior publication, so authors can still submit the same work to a peer-reviewed journal afterwards without disqualification.

    Is bioRxiv a credible source?

    bioRxiv preprints undergo screening for plagiarism, scope, and safety risks, but not scientific peer review, so credibility must be assessed manuscript-by-manuscript rather than assumed from the platform. Readers should treat findings as provisional until formal peer review or replication confirms them.

    Is it okay to cite bioRxiv preprints?

    Yes. bioRxiv preprints receive a DOI and are part of the citable scientific record, indexed by Crossref, Google Scholar, and Europe PMC. NIH explicitly encourages citing preprints as interim research products in grant applications.

    Is bioRxiv considered a journal?

    No. bioRxiv is a preprint repository operated by the non-profit openRxiv, distinct from a journal because it lacks an editorial acceptance decision, a fixed issue/volume structure, and formal peer review — the three conditions JCR and Scimago require for metric eligibility.

    Implications for Research Administrators

    For institutional research offices, funders, and evaluators, the practical takeaway is definitional discipline: preprint usage and altmetrics belong in a different evidence category from journal-level citation metrics, and conflating them in tenure, grant, or REF-adjacent narrative CVs misrepresents what each number measures. A downloads count on bioRxiv answers “how much attention has this manuscript attracted,” not “how citable is this journal” — the two questions require different data sources and different caveats when reported to a research-administration committee.

    As preprint servers proliferate across disciplines, the underlying eligibility logic will not change: JCR and Scimago metrics remain reserved for peer-reviewed, editorially governed serial publications. What is likely to evolve is the sophistication of preprint-specific metrics — the Web of Science Preprint Citation Index and NISO’s altmetrics recommended practices are both signs that the field is building dedicated infrastructure rather than forcing preprints into journal-shaped metrics they were never built to receive.

  • Is bioRxiv Peer-Reviewed? What Screening Checks

    bioRxiv preprints are not peer-reviewed. Every submission passes a basic screening process — checked for plagiarism, offensive or non-scientific content, and research-integrity or biosecurity concerns — before posting, usually within 24-48 hours. That screening confirms a manuscript is a genuine, appropriately scoped scientific report; it does not evaluate whether the methods are sound, the data support the conclusions, or the findings are correct. Formal peer review only happens later, if and when the manuscript is submitted to a journal or an independent review service.

    bioRxiv is a free preprint server for the life sciences, operated by the non-profit openRxiv and founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2013, that lets researchers post manuscripts publicly before or during journal submission.

    What bioRxiv’s screening process actually checks

    bioRxiv runs a documented two-step screen on every submission. The first pass is done by in-house staff with scientific and editorial backgrounds, who confirm the manuscript is complete, correctly formatted, and within the server’s life-sciences scope. This stage automatically checks for plagiarism and rules out content that is not a research article — news items, advertisements, policy statements, narrative reviews, and protocols without new data are all excluded.

    The second pass is carried out by bioRxiv Affiliates, a network of volunteer principal investigators, who confirm the work is genuine biological research and flag anything that could pose a public-health or biosecurity risk, including what the US National Institutes of Health defines as dual-use research of concern. Overtly identifying patient information is also removed at this stage.

    • Plagiarism detection against published and preprint literature
    • Confirmation the submission is a scientific research article, not opinion, protocol, or promotional content
    • Dual-use and public-health risk screening by volunteer affiliates
    • Removal of overt patient- or participant-identifying material
    • Scope check — routing clinical-research submissions to medRxiv where appropriate

    bioRxiv’s own documentation states that roughly 5% of submissions do not clear this screen and are not posted. Screening typically completes within 24-48 hours — a fraction of the weeks or months a journal’s peer review takes, which is the entire point of a preprint server.

    Screening vs peer review: what’s the difference

    Screening is a gatekeeping check on form and conduct. Peer review is an expert evaluation of scientific substance — whether the experimental design supports the stated conclusions, whether statistics are applied correctly, and whether the work advances the field. bioRxiv is explicit that no endorsement of an article’s methods, assumptions, conclusions, or scientific quality is implied by its appearance on the server.

    Dimension bioRxiv screening Formal peer review
    Who performs it In-house staff + volunteer affiliates Independent subject-matter expert reviewers
    What it checks Plagiarism, scope, ethics, biosecurity, format Methodology, data integrity, validity of conclusions
    Typical duration 24-48 hours Weeks to several months
    Outcome Posted or rejected (~5% rejected) Accept, revise, or reject a specific journal submission
    Result on the record A citable preprint with a DOI A certified, published journal article

    Some preprints do receive structured external review while still hosted as preprints — eLife launched its Preprint Review service on bioRxiv in May 2020, and services such as Review Commons operate similarly. These are useful signals, but they are separate, named services layered on top of bioRxiv, not a function of bioRxiv’s own screening.

    Independent research (Abdill & Blekhman, cited widely including on Wikipedia) has found that roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are eventually published in a peer-reviewed journal, and bioRxiv automatically links to the published version once a match is found. That figure is a useful proxy for eventual quality, but it says nothing about the third that are never formally reviewed, and it cannot be applied to any single preprint you are reading today.

    Is medRxiv peer-reviewed too?

    No. medRxiv, bioRxiv’s sister server for clinical and health-related research, follows the same principle: manuscripts are screened, not peer-reviewed. Because medRxiv covers clinical and public-health topics, its screening is deliberately stricter — submissions undergo additional review for content that could directly influence patient behaviour or clinical practice, and certain categories (such as case reports without a clear scientific contribution) are restricted or excluded outright.

    The same “originator, not owner” caution applies here as everywhere in preprint literature: a medRxiv posting is not evidence of clinical validation and should not be treated as equivalent to a peer-reviewed clinical trial report or a regulatory submission.

    What happens to a preprint after it’s screened and posted

    Once posted, a bioRxiv preprint is permanent and citable. It receives a DOI immediately, cannot be withdrawn once published, and authors can post revised versions that retain the same DOI. Authors typically submit the same manuscript to a journal in parallel or afterwards, where it then enters that journal’s own peer-review process.

    bioRxiv operates a “bioRxiv-to-journal” (B2J) transfer service with more than 300 partner journals — including Cell Reports, PLOS Biology, Genetics in Medicine, and Molecular Biology of the Cell — allowing authors to send a screened preprint directly into a journal’s submission and peer-review pipeline without re-uploading files. This accelerates the path from preprint to certified publication but does not shortcut peer review itself.

    • Readers can post public comments, moderated to professional standards
    • bioRxiv reserves the right to remove plagiarised material or work found to breach research-integrity standards after posting
    • A link to the eventual published version is added automatically, usually within a few weeks of journal publication

    Common questions about bioRxiv and peer review

    Is bioRxiv credible?

    bioRxiv is a credible, widely used distribution channel run by a respected non-profit, but credibility of the platform is separate from validity of any individual manuscript. Screening filters out plagiarism and ethical breaches; it does not certify scientific quality, so each preprint must be read critically on its own merits.

    Is it okay to cite bioRxiv?

    Yes — bioRxiv preprints receive a DOI and are formally citable as part of the scientific record. Most style guides and journals require the citation to note explicitly that the source is an unrefereed preprint, so readers understand it has not passed formal peer review.

    Is a preprint a reliable source?

    A preprint can be a reliable indicator of ongoing research but is not a validated source in the way a peer-reviewed article is. Reliability depends on the specific manuscript — its methods, transparency, and any subsequent independent review — not on the preprint server’s basic screening alone.

    Is bioRxiv considered published?

    bioRxiv preprints are publicly posted and citable, but they are not “published” in the traditional peer-reviewed sense used by journals, funders, and most academic assessment exercises. Many institutions and funders explicitly distinguish preprints from peer-reviewed publications in reporting requirements.

    Implications for authors, readers, and institutions

    For authors, bioRxiv’s fast, lightly gated screening is the trade-off that makes rapid dissemination possible — but it also means responsibility for accuracy sits with the authors, not the platform, until formal peer review occurs. For readers and journalists, the practical rule is definitive: treat unreviewed bioRxiv claims as provisional, check whether a published, peer-reviewed version exists via the automatic journal link, and note preprint status explicitly whenever citing or reporting on one. For institutions building research-integrity or preprint-citation policies, bioRxiv’s own screening criteria — plagiarism, scope, dual-use risk, and patient confidentiality — are a useful documented baseline to reference, precisely because they are narrow and clearly bounded rather than a substitute for peer review.

    As preprint volume continues to grow across the life sciences, the distinction between “screened” and “peer-reviewed” is likely to matter more, not less — particularly as overlay review services like eLife’s Preprint Review and Review Commons expand the space between the two.