CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: biorxiv submission guidelines

  • bioRxiv Review Process: Screening Explained

    bioRxiv review is not peer review — it is a two-stage screening process. In-house staff and volunteer Principal Investigators check every submission for plagiarism, non-scientific content, inappropriate article types, and material that could endanger public health, typically within 24-48 hours. Roughly 5% of submissions do not meet bioRxiv’s posting criteria and are returned, escalated for discussion, or declined outright.

    bioRxiv is a preprint server for the life sciences, operated by the non-profit openRxiv, that posts complete but unpublished manuscripts online before formal journal peer review begins. Understanding what its screening actually checks for — and what happens when a submission does not clear it — helps authors avoid the delays that come from an incomplete or out-of-scope submission.

    What does bioRxiv’s review actually screen for?

    bioRxiv’s screening exists to keep the server usable and safe, not to certify scientific validity. Every submission is checked against a fixed set of criteria before it is allowed to post.

    According to bioRxiv’s own FAQ, all articles are screened on submission for four things: plagiarism, non-scientific content, inappropriate article types, and material that could endanger the health of individual patients or the public. That last category explicitly includes studies describing dual-use research of concern, and work that challenges or could compromise accepted public health advice on infectious disease transmission, immunisation, or therapy.

    • Automated text analysis for plagiarism and content already published elsewhere
    • Manual checks that the manuscript is a genuine research article, not a review, opinion piece, protocol-only submission, or product announcement
    • Screening for images or details that could identify a patient or study participant
    • Assessment of whether findings could alarm or mislead the public if posted without peer review

    Manuscripts already published in a journal cannot be submitted, and a preprint cannot sit on both bioRxiv and its sister server medRxiv simultaneously — doing so results in withdrawal of the article.

    How does the two-stage screening process work?

    bioRxiv runs a defined two-step pipeline rather than a single editorial check. Both stages must be passed before a manuscript posts.

    The first stage is in-house screening. According to bioRxiv’s screening-procedures notice, staff with scientific and editorial backgrounds verify that submission fields are complete, that group authors are not mis-listed as individuals, and that the manuscript is an appropriate article type — a research article is accepted; a narrative review, commentary, opinion piece, or standalone protocol is not. This stage also runs the automated plagiarism check.

    The second stage is Affiliate screening. Volunteer Principal Investigators, known as bioRxiv Affiliates, ask two questions: does the manuscript present biological research, and is there potential for public harm from posting it as a preprint? If an Affiliate has concerns on either point, the submission is flagged for further in-house discussion rather than posted automatically.

    bioRxiv states that this combined process “typically takes 24–48 hours, but can take longer over weekends and holidays, or if the submission requires in-house discussion and further correspondence with authors.” Its FAQ separately notes preprints “usually appear on bioRxiv within 72 hours” once screening and formatting are complete — the wider window accounts for queueing and the PDF-to-HTML conversion that follows posting.

    What happens when a preprint is held, escalated, or declined?

    Screening produces one of five outcomes, not a simple accept/reject binary. Manuscripts can be escalated at any stage for discussion by bioRxiv’s Content Team and, where needed, its Founders or external advisors — commonly because the article type or content falls outside scope, or because it contains conclusions that could cause public alarm, such as data disputing an established toxicity or carcinogenicity finding.

    Outcome What it means Typical trigger Author’s next step
    Posted Preprint goes live, usually within 24-72 hours Passes in-house and Affiliate checks No action needed; revisions remain possible later
    Returned for correction Sent back before posting Missing metadata, formatting errors, incomplete author or funder details Correct fields in the Author Area and resubmit
    Escalated for discussion Flagged for internal review Scope question, or risk of misleading/alarming the public Await correspondence; respond promptly to queries
    Transferred to medRxiv bioRxiv submission closed; author redirected by email Manuscript judged better suited to medRxiv’s clinical/health scope Resubmit via submit.medrxiv.org, which runs a separate screening team
    Declined Does not proceed to posting Fails scope or safety criteria, or judged “better disseminated after peer review” due to public-impact risk Address the specific concern and pursue journal peer review, or resubmit once the issue is resolved

    bioRxiv reports that approximately 5% of submissions are found not to meet its posting criteria. Content judged out of scope for public-health reasons is typically redirected to medRxiv rather than declined outright, since the two servers are co-managed but apply separate screening policies.

    What should authors do if their submission is held or declined?

    The correct response depends on which of the outcomes above applies. Treating every hold as a rejection — or every rejection as final — wastes time that a targeted fix would save.

    • If returned for correction: fix the flagged metadata field (author list, affiliations, funder ROR ID, special characters) directly in the Author Area; this is usually resolved within a day.
    • If escalated: respond promptly and specifically to any correspondence from bioRxiv’s Content Team — vague or delayed replies extend the discussion period.
    • If redirected to medRxiv: follow the email instructions to resubmit at submit.medrxiv.org; the bioRxiv submission is closed and cannot be revived.
    • If declined for scope or article type: check the FAQ’s excluded-content list before resubmitting — narrative reviews, case reports, hypothesis papers without new data, and standalone protocols are structurally out of scope, not fixable by rewording.
    • If declined for public-harm risk: bioRxiv’s stated position is that such findings are “better disseminated after peer review” — pursue a journal submission rather than repeated resubmission to the preprint server.

    Authors remain solely responsible for submitted content, including material produced with generative AI tools; AI systems are not permitted to be listed as authors. Institutional research-integrity offices should treat this authorial-responsibility principle consistently with their own authorship criteria and contributor-responsibility standards, since a preprint host’s screening does not substitute for an institution’s own compliance checks.

    Frequently asked questions

    Is bioRxiv reputable?

    Yes. bioRxiv is widely used across the life sciences and is indexed by Google Scholar, Crossref, Europe PubMed Central, and PubMed for NIH-funded work. It is not peer-reviewed, but its screening process and non-profit governance under openRxiv are well documented and independently verifiable.

    Why do people use bioRxiv?

    Authors use bioRxiv because formal peer review can take months, and preprints let other scientists see, discuss, and comment on findings immediately. It also lets researchers establish priority via a timestamped, citable DOI before journal publication concludes.

    Who owns bioRxiv?

    bioRxiv is operated by openRxiv, a non-profit founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It is funded by a consortium including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, Caltech, Imperial College London, MIT, and Stanford — no single commercial owner controls the server.

    Is bioRxiv peer-reviewed?

    No. bioRxiv preprints are not certified by peer review, edited, or typeset before posting. Some manuscripts undergo peer review elsewhere concurrently, and those reviews may appear alongside the preprint on bioRxiv’s dashboard, but posting itself only requires passing screening.

    What this means for institutions and authors

    bioRxiv’s screening model draws a clear line that research-administration offices should reinforce internally: screening filters for scope, safety, and originality, while peer review evaluates scientific validity. The ICMJE’s Recommendations similarly caution that preprints have not been peer reviewed and should be identified as such wherever they are cited or discussed publicly. COPE’s guidance on preprints makes the same distinction, placing responsibility for research-integrity safeguards at this stage jointly on the server’s screening and the submitting institution.

    For authors, the practical takeaway is straightforward: a held or declined submission is almost always a scope, formatting, or safety issue with a defined remedy, not a verdict on the science. Reading bioRxiv’s excluded-content list and funder/author metadata requirements before submission remains the single most effective way to clear bioRxiv review on the first pass.

  • bioRxiv License Update: What Changed for Authors and Reuse

    bioRxiv’s licence update, live via the platform’s Author Area since January 2026, lets authors request a change to a less-restrictive Creative Commons licence on a preprint already posted — without submitting a new version. The change can only move in one direction, towards more permissive reuse, and it exists chiefly to help authors bring older preprints into line with funder mandates that require CC BY.

    bioRxiv is a free preprint server for the life sciences, operated by the non-profit organisation openRxiv, which also runs the companion server medRxiv for health-sciences preprints.

    Contents

    What is the bioRxiv licence update, and why was it introduced?

    The bioRxiv licence update is a self-service feature that lets a preprint’s corresponding or submitting author switch its Creative Commons licence to a less restrictive option after posting, without triggering a full revision. openRxiv documented the mechanics in a step-by-step guide published on 7 January 2026, and followed up with a policy explainer on 20 May 2026 setting out the rationale.

    The trigger is compliance drift. Openrxiv’s own explainer states that a growing number of funders “require their grantees to apply specific licenses to their preprints, typically CC BY,” but that “many authors are unaware of this” and post under a more restrictive option by default. Before this update, the only remedy was submitting an entirely new version of the preprint and re-selecting a licence — a heavier process that also generates a fresh revision record. This is distinct from an earlier, smaller change in January 2025, when bioRxiv and medRxiv reordered their licence-selection menus to place CC BY at the top of the list; the 2026 update is the first mechanism that lets authors retroactively fix the licence on preprints they have already posted.

    How do authors request a licence change?

    The workflow runs entirely through the bioRxiv submission system’s Author Area and does not require re-uploading a manuscript. It applies only to the most recent version of a preprint, and only to preprints posted within the past two years.

    • Log into the Author Area from the bioRxiv submit page.
    • Locate the “Request License Update” box on the right-hand side of the page.
    • Select “Update license choice on previously posted papers.”
    • Choose the eligible preprint by its manuscript ID (only papers where the requester was corresponding or submitting author are listed).
    • Select a new, less restrictive licence and submit the request; a confirmation email follows.

    Two constraints apply strictly. First, the feature is unavailable if an incomplete revision is already in the submission system, or if a previous licence request is still pending. Second, a request can even be made after the preprint has been formally published in a journal, since the licence sits on the preprint record independently of the journal’s own copyright terms.

    Licence options compared: what actually changed

    bioRxiv preprints have long offered a choice of Creative Commons licences plus a “no licence” (all rights reserved) default, and a CC0 public-domain option for US federal employees such as NIH intramural researchers. What changed in 2026 is not the menu of options — it is that authors can now move an already-posted preprint from a more restrictive option to a less restrictive one after the fact.

    Licence Commercial reuse Attribution required Text-and-data mining / AI training Typical funder fit
    CC BY Permitted Yes Unrestricted, including commercial use HHMI, Gates Foundation, most cOAlition S funders
    CC BY-ND Permitted (no derivatives) Yes Mining permitted; no adapted/derivative outputs distributed Rarely funder-compliant
    CC BY-NC Not permitted Yes Restricted to non-commercial use Non-compliant with CC BY mandates
    CC BY-NC-ND Not permitted Yes Most restrictive; non-commercial, no derivatives Rarely funder-compliant
    CC0 Permitted (public domain) No Unrestricted US federal/NIH intramural authors only
    No licence selected Not permitted without separate permission N/A Reuse requires author permission Non-compliant with most funder mandates

    Because Creative Commons licences are irrevocable once attached to a public copy of a work, the update only runs in the permissive direction. An author can move from CC BY-NC to CC BY; the system rejects a request to move from CC BY to a more restrictive licence, since existing downloaded and archived copies would remain under the original, broader terms regardless.

    What this means for CC-BY reuse, text-and-data mining, and AI training

    bioRxiv’s baseline terms of use already permit text-and-data mining of posted content, which is the legal hook that has made preprint corpora attractive training data for machine-learning systems. The licence attached to an individual preprint then determines the scope of onward reuse beyond that baseline — and this is where the 2026 update has practical bite.

    Under CC BY, any party — including a commercial AI developer — may reproduce, adapt, and redistribute the work, provided the original authors are credited. Under CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND, commercial reuse (which covers most AI model training conducted by for-profit developers) is not licensed, regardless of the platform-level text-mining consent. That gap is precisely what several funders have moved to close: the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s preprint requirement, effective 1 January 2026, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s preprint mandate, in force since 1 January 2025, both require grantee preprints to carry CC BY. The licence-update feature exists to let authors already out of step with those mandates fix a specific preprint without a full resubmission.

    For institutions and research-integrity offices, the practical implication is that a preprint’s licence — not merely its posting on an open server — is the operative variable for downstream reuse and AI-training permissions. Auditing grantee preprints for licence compliance, not just for the fact of preprint deposit, is now a distinct compliance step.

    Answer-first Q&A

    How do I update a bioRxiv?

    Authors can request a licence update from the Author Area of the bioRxiv submission system, using the “Request License Update” box, without submitting a full revision. The change applies only to preprints posted in the past two years and only to the most recent version, moving to a less restrictive licence.

    What are the licence options for bioRxiv?

    bioRxiv authors can choose CC BY, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-ND, or leave the preprint with no licence (all rights reserved). A CC0 public-domain option is also available specifically for US federal employees, such as NIH intramural researchers.

    Does bioRxiv count as published?

    No. A bioRxiv preprint is not peer reviewed and does not constitute formal journal publication; it is a publicly posted manuscript with its own DOI. Authors remain free to submit the same work to a journal afterward, and the preprint record persists independently of that later publication.

    Who maintains bioRxiv?

    bioRxiv is operated by openRxiv, a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing science communication, which also runs the companion health-sciences server medRxiv. openRxiv is supported by institutions including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Sergey Brin Family Foundation.

    Implications for institutions, funders, and authors

    Research-administration offices tracking open-access compliance should treat the licence update as a remediation tool, not a substitute for correct licence selection at submission. It closes a specific gap — preprints posted before an author understood their funder’s CC BY requirement — but it does not apply to preprints older than two years, to superseded versions, or where a revision is already mid-process.

    For anyone advising authors on authorship rights and responsibilities, the clearest guidance is to check funder licensing terms before first posting, since fixing a mismatched licence later depends on the preprint still being within the two-year eligibility window. Related open-research terminology, including licensing and reuse definitions, is tracked in the CASRAI open-research dictionary.

    Expect other preprint servers to face similar pressure as CC BY mandates spread across research funders. The direction of travel — author-initiated, platform-mediated licence correction rather than manuscript resubmission — is a practical template other repositories are likely to adopt as funder compliance checks tighten.

  • BioRxiv Submission Guidelines: A 5-Step Process for First-Time Authors

    BioRxiv submission guidelines require a single PDF (or Word file plus separate figure files), a free author-area registration, an article-category selection, and a two-step in-house-plus-Affiliate screening that typically clears in 24-48 hours. There is no submission fee, no mandatory template, and no peer review before posting. This guide walks first-time authors through each stage, the templates available, and the reasons manuscripts most often get sent back.

    bioRxiv is the life-sciences preprint server operated by the non-profit openRxiv; a preprint is a complete, citable manuscript posted before or during formal peer review, and bioRxiv assigns it a Crossref DOI (prefix 10.1101) as soon as screening is passed. Clinical trial reports and most epidemiology studies must instead go to bioRxiv’s sister server, medRxiv — submitting one of these to bioRxiv is itself a common rejection reason, covered in section four below.

    1. What are bioRxiv’s submission requirements?

    bioRxiv does not enforce a house style, but it does enforce a fixed submission format and a content-eligibility test. The manuscript must be unpublished at the time of deposit, all co-authors must have consented to posting, and the work must fall within a relevant life-sciences subject category.

    Submission route What you upload Conversion
    Single PDF Full text, figures and tables combined None needed — this is the simplest route
    Word + separate figures Word file for text/tables; figures as JPEG, TIFF, EPS or PowerPoint bioRxiv’s automated engine builds the PDF
    LaTeX Manuscript converted to PDF before upload (LaTeX source may accompany it as Supplemental Material) Author-side conversion required

    Large primary datasets belong in a community database such as GenBank or the Protein Data Bank rather than as Supplemental Material, in line with the Fort Lauderdale data-sharing guidelines that bioRxiv references directly in its submission guide.

    2. Setting up your bioRxiv author area

    Every submission starts with a free account on the bioRxiv Manuscript Processing System at submit.biorxiv.org. The bioRxiv author area is where you register, start a new submission, continue a saved draft, proof a converted manuscript, and later submit revisions.

    1. Register with an institutional or personal email address — no institutional affiliation is required to create an account.
    2. Enter the author area and select “Submit a New Manuscript.”
    3. Upload files, enter co-author details for every listed author, and add funder names and grant numbers.
    4. Select an article category: New Results, Confirmatory Results, or Contradictory Results.
    5. Choose a distribution licence — CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND, CC0, or no reuse.

    Copyright remains with the author throughout. Once a version is posted, it cannot be deleted, but authors can submit a revision at any time before journal acceptance via the same author-area screen.

    3. Choosing a manuscript template

    A bioRxiv template is optional, not mandatory — the platform explicitly states it does not require a particular article format or style, and many authors simply reuse the formatting of their target journal. Two community-maintained options cover most first-time authors.

    • Word template: a community-built .docx template on GitHub styled after published bioRxiv papers, useful if you want a clean starting structure without building one from scratch.
    • bioRxiv LaTeX template: several Overleaf templates are built specifically for bioRxiv preprints and can often be re-purposed for the eventual journal submission, saving reformatting time later in the pipeline.

    Whichever route you choose, convert LaTeX output to PDF before upload — bioRxiv’s system does not compile .tex source directly.

    4. What happens after you submit (timeline and screening)

    Submitted manuscripts go through two screening stages before posting. In-house staff first check completeness and confirm the article type is eligible; volunteer Principal Investigators known as bioRxiv Affiliates then assess whether the work constitutes genuine biological research and whether it poses any public-harm or biosecurity risk.

    This combined process is the answer to a frequent search — bioRxiv submission time — and typically completes within 24-48 hours of upload. Once approved, the PDF posts immediately; conversion to full-text HTML and XML can take a further 1-2 days, so the machine-readable version usually lags the PDF by up to 48 hours.

    Stage Typical duration
    Registration and upload Immediate
    In-house completeness/eligibility check Same day to 24 hours
    Affiliate biosecurity/scope review Within 24-48 hours total
    PDF posting after approval Immediate
    Full-text HTML/XML conversion Up to 48 additional hours

    5. Common rejection reasons and how to avoid them

    bioRxiv’s own screening documentation and content-scope rules point to a consistent set of avoidable rejections for first-time authors.

    • Wrong content type: case reports, narrative reviews, editorials, letters, opinion pieces, hypotheses without new data, and laboratory protocols without accompanying results are all excluded from bioRxiv’s scope.
    • Wrong server: clinical trial results and most epidemiology studies must go to medRxiv, not bioRxiv — this single misrouting error is one of the most common first-submission mistakes.
    • Already published: a manuscript that has already been accepted by a journal cannot be deposited as a new bioRxiv submission.
    • Missing author consent: every listed co-author must have agreed to posting before submission; disputes here stall or block screening.
    • Biosecurity or dual-use concerns: Affiliates specifically screen for material that could pose a health or biosecurity risk, which can delay or prevent posting even for otherwise sound science.
    • Non-scientific or promotional content: bioRxiv is explicitly not a channel for news, product advertisements, or policy statements.

    6. Frequently asked questions

    Can anyone submit to bioRxiv?

    Yes — any author whose manuscript concerns a relevant scientific field, is unpublished, and has the consent of all co-authors can deposit it after free registration. No institutional affiliation is required, and there is no submission fee.

    When should you submit to bioRxiv?

    A manuscript can be submitted at any point before journal publication. Once a journal has formally published the paper, it can no longer be newly deposited as a bioRxiv preprint, though the platform still allows revisions of an existing preprint right up to journal acceptance.

    How long does a bioRxiv submission take?

    Screening typically completes within 24-48 hours of upload, after which the PDF posts immediately. The full-text HTML and XML version follows separately and can take up to 48 further hours to appear.

    How much does it cost to submit to bioRxiv?

    There is no charge for registration or for depositing an article. bioRxiv funds screening and hosting as a non-profit service operated by openRxiv rather than through author-facing fees.

    7. Implications for research offices and institutions

    Research-administration teams increasingly track preprints as part of grant-compliance and output reporting, not just publication records. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has, since Notice NOT-OD-17-050, explicitly permitted investigators to cite preprints — including bioRxiv postings — in grant applications and progress reports, and cOAlition S’s Plan S framework recognises preprints as a valid interim compliance route ahead of a peer-reviewed version.

    Because a bioRxiv DOI is assigned at posting and persists across revisions, institutions can use it as a stable identifier to link the preprint, the eventual journal version, and contributor metadata. Where a project already uses the CRediT contributor role taxonomy to record who did what — CASRAI originated CRediT in 2014, and the taxonomy is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — carrying those role assignments into the preprint stage keeps authorship records consistent from first deposit through final publication.

    bioRxiv’s direct-transfer (B2J) programme, which now spans more than 190 partner journals and peer-review services, also removes a second manual re-entry step for research-office staff supporting authors through submission — files and metadata move directly from the bioRxiv author area to the receiving journal without being re-uploaded.

    Building preprinting into standard practice

    For first-time authors, the practical barrier to bioRxiv is low: no fee, no mandatory template, and a screening turnaround measured in hours rather than weeks. The remaining friction is almost entirely about content fit — choosing the right server, the right article category, and confirming every co-author has consented before upload.

    Institutions that build preprint deposit into standard research-administration workflows — alongside DOI tracking, contributor-role records, and funder-mandate checks — turn a one-off submission task into a repeatable, auditable step in the research lifecycle.