Tag: biorxiv submission

bioRxiv Login and Author Account Quick-Fix Guide

The most common cause of a bioRxiv login failure is entering an email address that does not match the one bioRxiv holds on file — not a broken account. If the manuscript-processing system rejects your credentials, a password reset, an ORCID sign-in, or a check of your institutional single sign-on session will resolve the great majority of cases within minutes, without needing to contact support.

bioRxiv is a free preprint server for the biological sciences, operated by openRxiv, a non-profit organisation founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Author access runs through a separate manuscript-processing system at submit.biorxiv.org, which is where most bioRxiv login problems, submission timeouts, and search-visibility questions actually originate.

Why does bioRxiv login fail?
Which bioRxiv access route should I use?
How do I fix a bioRxiv submission-portal timeout?
Why doesn’t my preprint show up in bioRxiv search yet?
Answer-first: common bioRxiv author questions
What this means for authors and institutions

A bioRxiv login failure is almost always a credentials mismatch, not a system fault. The manuscript-processing system checks the email address against the one associated with your account correspondence, and a single character difference — a typo, an old institutional address, or a personal address used instead of a work one — is enough to block entry.

Wrong email address: use the exact address that received your original bioRxiv correspondence, not any address you happen to check first.
Forgotten password: use the “I have forgotten my password” link on the login page at submit.biorxiv.org rather than guessing repeatedly, which can trigger a temporary lockout.
Browser cache or cookies: a stale session cookie can cause a silent redirect loop; clearing cache or trying a private browsing window isolates the problem quickly.
No account yet: first-time submitters must register a new account before any login attempt will succeed.

bioRxiv does not require an institutional email address for registration or submission. A personal address works equally well, though correspondence sent to an old institutional inbox after a job move is one of the most frequent hidden causes of “my account doesn’t exist” reports.

Which bioRxiv access route should I use?

bioRxiv supports three distinct sign-in routes, and mixing them up is a common source of confusion. Choosing the wrong route for your situation, rather than a genuine outage, explains most repeat login failures.

Access route	Best for	What it requires	Common failure point
Email + password	Standard authors registered directly at submit.biorxiv.org	Registered account email matching correspondence records	Using an unregistered or outdated email address
ORCID iD sign-in	Authors who linked an ORCID identifier to their bioRxiv profile	An active, authorised ORCID connection	ORCID authorisation revoked or never completed
Institutional Shibboleth (SSO)	Authors at participating institutions	A live campus single sign-on session	Expired SSO session or cached campus login
Password reset link	Anyone who has forgotten credentials	Access to the registered email inbox	Reset email filtered into spam or a promotions folder

If one route fails repeatedly, switching to a different route — for example, trying ORCID sign-in instead of retyping a forgotten password — often resolves access faster than repeated retries on the same method.

How do I fix a bioRxiv submission-portal timeout?

Submission-portal timeouts usually occur during file upload, not during login itself. Large manuscript files, unstable connections, or an incomplete prior submission left “in progress” in the Author Area can all cause the portal to stall or reject a new attempt.

Check for an unfinished submission first. An incomplete draft sitting in the Author Area can block new actions until it is completed or withdrawn.
Convert TeX and LaTeX files to PDF before upload; bioRxiv requires PDF, Word, or WordPerfect files for text, since raw TeX source is not accepted.
Split very large supplementary files where possible, since upload timeouts scale with file size and connection stability.
Retry from a wired connection or a different network if a university VPN or proxy is interrupting the upload session.

There is no fee to submit a manuscript to bioRxiv, so a stalled upload is a technical issue, not a payment or access-tier problem. Screened preprints typically post within 72 hours of a completed submission, though screening can take longer over a weekend, a holiday, or when a submission requires extra scrutiny.

Why doesn’t my preprint show up in bioRxiv search yet?

A newly posted preprint appears on bioRxiv as a PDF first. Full-text HTML and XML versions — the formats used for text mining and some search indexing — typically take 24 to 48 hours longer to generate after the PDF itself has posted. This conversion lag is the single most overlooked explanation for “my paper isn’t searchable yet” reports, and it is distinct from any login or account fault.

External indexing adds a second, separate delay layer on top of bioRxiv’s own site search:

Google, Google Scholar, and Crossref index preprints on their own crawl schedules, independent of bioRxiv’s internal posting time.
Semantic Scholar, Europe PMC, and the Preprint Citation Index (linked to Web of Science) each run separate ingestion pipelines.
PubMed indexing applies only to preprints reporting NIH-funded research, and follows NIH’s own timetable, not bioRxiv’s.

Authors searching for their own preprint immediately after posting should check the direct DOI link or the bioRxiv site search first, since third-party search engines can lag by days rather than hours.

Answer-first: common bioRxiv author questions

How do I submit on bioRxiv?

Authors register a free account at submit.biorxiv.org, then use the Author Area to upload a manuscript as a single PDF or as separate text and figure files for automated conversion. There is no submission fee. All submissions pass through a screening step before posting, which normally completes within 72 hours.

Why is bioRxiv taking so long?

Most preprints post within 72 hours of submission, but screening can take longer over a weekend or public holiday, or when a manuscript needs extra scrutiny for content, scope, or plagiarism checks. A submission stuck well beyond this window usually indicates a screening flag rather than a technical fault.

Can I withdraw a bioRxiv preprint?

Authors cannot delete a posted preprint because it carries a permanent, citable DOI. Instead, authors submit a withdrawal statement through “Submit a Revision” in the Author Area; bioRxiv then posts a withdrawal notice and adds a “Withdrawn” watermark while keeping the original version accessible via the article’s Info/History tab.

Who owns bioRxiv?

bioRxiv is operated by openRxiv, a non-profit organisation founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and funded by a consortium including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and several universities. This non-profit, multi-institutional governance is a distinct fact worth noting when assessing bioRxiv’s independence as scholarly infrastructure.

What this means for authors and institutions

Most reported bioRxiv access problems are configuration issues rather than platform outages: mismatched email addresses, expired institutional SSO sessions, unlinked ORCID connections, or misunderstood conversion timelines. Research administrators supporting first-time submitters can prevent most support tickets by confirming, before submission day, which email address a researcher registered with and which sign-in route their institution actually supports.

As preprint screening and indexing pipelines add further automated checks, the gap between “posted” and “fully searchable everywhere” is likely to persist. Authors and institutional research offices should treat the 24-to-48-hour full-text conversion window and the separate, slower third-party indexing timelines as expected behaviour, not a fault to escalate. Understanding author responsibilities for posted content, including accuracy and originality obligations, remains part of good authorship practice throughout the submission and revision process.

July 3, 2026

medRxiv Submission for Clinical Research: What’s Different

medRxiv submission for a clinical paper requires ethics/IRB approval documentation, a trial ID from an ICMJE-recognised registry, and mandatory disclaimer language warning against clinical use — none of which bioRxiv’s basic-science workflow asks for. The two servers share the same submission portal and screening infrastructure, but medRxiv layers on health-research-specific checks that authors coming from bioRxiv, or submitting to a preprint server for the first time, often miss.

medRxiv is a preprint server for complete, unpublished manuscripts in medicine, clinical research and related health sciences, operated by the non-profit openRxiv alongside its sister site bioRxiv. This guide sets out exactly what is different about the clinical submission path, so administrators and authors can prepare the right documentation before they open the submission form.

What makes medRxiv submission different from bioRxiv?
How do you submit a clinical manuscript to medRxiv?
What ethics approval, trial registration and disclaimer does medRxiv require?
Common questions about medRxiv submission
What this means for research administrators and authors

What Makes medRxiv Submission Different From bioRxiv?

medRxiv and bioRxiv run on the same manuscript-processing system and both charge no submission fee, but their scope and screening checks diverge sharply. medRxiv exists for research involving human health outcomes; bioRxiv is scoped to the life sciences and states it is “not intended for clinical research.” That scope distinction drives every requirement below.

The clearest technical marker of the split shows up in the DOI itself. Under medRxiv’s submission guide, DOIs assigned after 11 December 2019 carry an eight-digit suffix with a date stamp, while bioRxiv’s equivalent DOIs use a six-digit suffix — a small but genuine artefact of the two platforms being built as parallel, not identical, systems.

Requirement	medRxiv	bioRxiv
Scope	Human health, clinical and medical research	Life sciences; explicitly excludes clinical research
Ethics/IRB statement	Required for any study using human subjects, samples or data	Not a stated submission requirement
Clinical trial registration	Mandatory ICMJE-recognised trial ID for prospective interventional studies	Not applicable to scope
Case reports/case series	Explicitly out of scope, declined	Not a defined exclusion category
DOI suffix (post 11 Dec 2019)	Eight digits	Six digits
Article categories	~50 subject categories, one per preprint	New / Confirmatory / Contradictory Results
Direct-to-journal transfer	144+ partner journals (M2J)	Separate B2J partner list

How Do You Submit a Clinical Manuscript to medRxiv?

The mechanics — register, upload, declare, await screening — mirror any preprint server. What differs is the depth of declarations medRxiv demands before it accepts a health-research file.

Register and log in. First-time authors create a free account at submit.medrxiv.org, typically via ORCID, before entering the Author Area.
Prepare the manuscript. Upload a single PDF containing text, figures and tables, or a Word file plus separate figure files that medRxiv’s engine converts automatically. LaTeX must be pre-converted to PDF.
Select one subject category from medRxiv’s roughly 50 health-science categories — only one may be chosen per preprint.
Complete the ethics, trial-registration, competing-interest and funding declarations described in the next section — this is the step with no bioRxiv equivalent.
Submit for screening. A manuscript is checked for plagiarism, non-scientific content, identifying patient information, and — specifically for medRxiv — ethical oversight and trial registration.
Posting. Once approved, the preprint receives a DOI and posts as PDF; full-text HTML and XML typically follow within two days.

Case reports, narrative reviews, editorials, veterinary studies and preclinical work are out of scope for medRxiv and are declined at screening — a stricter filter than bioRxiv applies, reflecting the risk of premature clinical information reaching patients or the media.

What Ethics Approval, Trial Registration and Disclaimer Does medRxiv Require?

This is the section that defines “clinical” preprint workflow. medRxiv submission for any study using human subjects, samples or data requires a statement of ethical oversight from an independent body — an Ethics Committee, Institutional Review Board (IRB), or equivalent — covering the entire study and every human sample, dataset and cohort involved.

medRxiv’s policy is unusually specific about what does not count. Its FAQ states the platform will not accept approval decisions from online tools such as the UK Health Research Authority’s Decision Tool, nor from audit bodies, Caldicott Guardians, biosafety committees or Research & Development departments — only a dedicated ethics oversight body qualifies.

Trial registration: any prospective interventional study — one that assigns people to an intervention to study a health outcome — must carry a trial ID from an ICMJE-recognised registry such as ClinicalTrials.gov. Studies without a trial ID at submission must register retrospectively before posting.
Novel drug/device exemptions: emergency-use products cleared under the US FDA’s Investigational New Drug (IND) or Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) mechanisms may be exempt from standard registration where public disclosure is precluded.
Competing-interest and funding statements: authors must disclose any payments or services received in the past 36 months that could be perceived to influence the work, and detail all funding that supported it.
Patient identifiability: images or combinations of details (exact ages, dates, geographic locations, direct quotes) that could identify a patient must be removed before submission; blurring or pixelation alone is not accepted.

Every accepted preprint also carries a fixed disclaimer, displayed on the page and stamped on the PDF: “Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.” Authors do not write this text themselves — it is applied automatically to every medRxiv posting, but institutions should brief clinical authors that it will appear, since press or clinician-facing communications referencing the preprint should carry the same caveat.

Screening that checks all of the above against a manuscript takes longer than a basic scientific-content check. medRxiv’s own FAQ states that article screening typically completes within two to four days, longer over a weekend or holiday, or where ethics or registration documentation needs following up — a direct consequence of the clinical-specific checks bioRxiv’s screening does not perform.

Common Questions About medRxiv Submission

How much does it cost to submit a manuscript to medRxiv?

There is no fee for registration or manuscript deposition on medRxiv. The platform is funded by contributions from organisations including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and several partner universities, not by author charges.

Is medRxiv peer reviewed?

No. Manuscripts on medRxiv are not certified by peer review, edited or typeset before posting; they undergo a basic screening for plagiarism, scientific content, ethics documentation and patient-identifying information only, not expert evaluation of methods or conclusions.

Is medRxiv indexed in PubMed?

Only partially. medRxiv preprints are indexed by Google Scholar, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, Europe PMC and the Preprint Citation Index (linked to Web of Science) as standard, but PubMed indexing is limited to preprints reporting NIH-funded research.

What is medRxiv’s impact factor?

medRxiv has no Journal Impact Factor, because it is a preprint server, not a peer-reviewed journal — a distinction medRxiv’s own FAQ states directly. Citation and attention metrics (views, downloads, Altmetric scores) are tracked instead.

What This Means for Research Administrators and Authors

For research administrators supporting clinical investigators, the practical takeaway is procedural: a clinical manuscript cannot move through medRxiv’s submission form as quickly as a bioRxiv basic-science paper, because the ethics-oversight statement and registry ID need to exist — correctly formatted — before submission starts, not be assembled during screening.

Authors citing a medRxiv preprint in an NIH application can do so directly; per NIH’s Reporting Preprints and Other Interim Research Products guidance (NOT-OD-17-050), the agency “encourages investigators to use interim research products, such as preprints, to speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor of their work.” The same DOI-based citation applies whether the preprint later transfers to one of medRxiv’s 144-plus M2J partner journals or is revised independently.

medRxiv also provides free bulk access to full text and metadata via APIs, separate from the author-facing login system, for institutions building preprint-tracking workflows. Given the added ethics and registration burden, clinical teams should budget documentation time ahead of any submission deadline rather than assume medRxiv mirrors bioRxiv’s lighter screening.

Sound documentation practice — consistent contributorship records, clear authorship and consent decisions agreed before submission, and coordination with research administration offices on ethics paperwork — reduces the single biggest cause of delay: manuscripts returned to authors for missing ethics statements, trial IDs or competing-interest disclosures that should have been resolved before the file was uploaded.