CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: openrxiv

  • bioRxiv Microbiology: 2026 Subject Growth

    bioRxiv’s microbiology collection holds more than 41,000 preprints as of July 2026, making it the platform’s third-largest subject area behind neuroscience (over 90,000) and bioinformatics (nearly 43,000). Together, these three fields account for close to two-fifths of every preprint ever posted to bioRxiv since its 2013 launch — a concentration that says as much about where biology’s fastest-moving fields are as it does about the platform itself.

    bioRxiv is a free, non-profit preprint repository for the biological sciences, now operated by openRxiv, on which authors post manuscripts before or independent of journal peer review, sorted into 27 subject-specific collections spanning everything from paleontology to synthetic biology.

    What is bioRxiv, and how are preprints organised by subject?

    bioRxiv was co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013 as an open-access preprint repository hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In March 2025, bioRxiv and its clinical-sciences counterpart medRxiv transferred to openRxiv, a newly formed non-profit created specifically to steward both platforms, as reported by Science.

    Every submission is placed into one of 27 subject collections at the point of posting. There is no fee to submit to bioRxiv, and authors self-select the collection that best matches their manuscript. This subject taxonomy is what makes volume comparisons across fields possible — and what this analysis draws on directly.

    One structural exception worth noting: the Epidemiology collection is now closed to new submissions following the completion of bioRxiv’s clinical-research pilot project, meaning its growth curve has effectively flattened while other collections continue to expand.

    How does bioRxiv microbiology compare to neuroscience and other subjects by volume?

    Based on a live count of bioRxiv’s own subject-collection pages taken on 3 July 2026, neuroscience is the platform’s largest single collection at 90,290 preprints — a 19.4% share of the roughly 465,700 preprints posted across all 27 collections to date. Bioinformatics follows at 42,825 (9.2%), with microbiology close behind at 41,133 (8.8%).

    Cell biology, evolutionary biology, genomics and biophysics round out the next tier, each holding between roughly 21,000 and 26,000 preprints. At the other end of the scale, paleontology (678) and clinical trials (138) remain niche collections by comparison, while epidemiology’s 2,067 total is now largely fixed given its closure to new submissions.

    Full ranking of bioRxiv’s largest subject collections

    Rank Subject collection Cumulative preprints Share of total
    1 Neuroscience 90,290 19.4%
    2 Bioinformatics 42,825 9.2%
    3 Microbiology 41,133 8.8%
    4 Cell Biology 25,753 5.5%
    5 Evolutionary Biology 24,737 5.3%
    6 Genomics 22,868 4.9%
    7 Biophysics 21,837 4.7%
    8 Ecology 20,284 4.4%
    9 Cancer Biology 18,775 4.0%
    10 Biochemistry 18,098 3.9%

    Source: CASRAI analysis of live bioRxiv subject-collection article counts, recorded 3 July 2026. These are cumulative totals since bioRxiv’s 2013 launch, not annual submission rates, so they reflect sustained field-level adoption of preprinting rather than a single year’s activity.

    Microbiology’s position just behind bioinformatics is notable given how differently the two fields work: bioinformatics preprints are often fast, computational and low-cost to produce, while microbiology preprints typically follow wet-lab experimental cycles. That microbiology has nonetheless built a corpus within a few thousand papers of bioinformatics points to strong, sustained preprinting culture within microbiology specifically — likely reinforced by the field’s pandemic-era experience with rapid-dissemination norms.

    Why does subject-level concentration matter for research administrators?

    For institutional leaders and research-administration teams, subject-level preprint concentration is a proxy for where scholarly communication norms are shifting fastest. A field with tens of thousands of preprints has, in effect, normalised pre-peer-review dissemination as a routine step in its publication workflow — with direct implications for how institutions track outputs, credit early dissemination in tenure and promotion review, and advise researchers on preprint policy.

    • Grant and promotion committees increasingly need clear policy on whether preprints count as citable outputs, particularly in high-volume fields like neuroscience and microbiology.
    • Research offices supporting microbiology, bioinformatics or genomics groups should expect preprint-first workflows to already be the norm, not the exception, among active researchers.
    • Fields with low preprint volume (pathology, zoology, clinical trials) may need different guidance, since preprinting culture there remains comparatively immature.

    This is also a live concern for research administrators and institutional leaders tracking how open-research norms diffuse unevenly across disciplines — subject-level data of this kind gives institutions a concrete basis for that assessment, rather than relying on anecdote.

    Common questions about bioRxiv preprints

    Is bioRxiv a preprint server?

    Yes. bioRxiv is a dedicated preprint server for the biological sciences, distributing manuscripts before or alongside formal peer review. It is operated by openRxiv, a non-profit created in 2025 specifically to run bioRxiv and medRxiv, and hosts subject collections spanning microbiology, neuroscience, genomics and 24 other biology-related fields.

    Can anyone submit to bioRxiv?

    Authors can deposit a manuscript in draft or final form provided it concerns a relevant scientific field, is unpublished at the time of submission, and all co-authors have consented. Authors must first register on the platform. bioRxiv screens submissions for basic scope and ethical compliance before posting, but does not conduct peer review.

    How much does it cost to publish in bioRxiv?

    There is no fee to submit a preprint to bioRxiv. This free-to-post model is a key driver of its growth across every subject collection, including the microbiology and neuroscience volumes analysed above, since it removes the cost barrier that applies to many open-access journal publication routes.

    Does bioRxiv count as published?

    A bioRxiv preprint is not equivalent to a peer-reviewed publication. It establishes a timestamped, citable public record of the work, and many journals allow later submission of the same manuscript, but it has not undergone formal peer review at the point of posting. Institutions and funders vary in how they weight preprints in assessment.

    Implications and outlook for scholarly communication

    The concentration of preprint volume in neuroscience, bioinformatics and microbiology is likely to persist rather than reverse. These fields combine large, active researcher populations with production cycles well suited to rapid dissemination, and none shows structural barriers comparable to epidemiology’s now-closed pilot pathway.

    For research-administration teams, the practical takeaway is to treat preprint-volume data by subject as a planning input: policy on preprint citation, researcher guidance, and repository integration should be calibrated to each discipline’s actual adoption level rather than applied uniformly across an institution’s full research portfolio.

  • PNAS bioRxiv Direct Submission: How B2J Works

    The PNAS bioRxiv submission pathway runs through bioRxiv’s own bioRxiv-to-journal (B2J) transfer tool, which sends manuscript files, figures and author metadata straight from a preprint’s “Author Area” into a partner journal’s editorial system. PNAS Nexus, the open-access companion journal published with Oxford University Press, is a listed B2J partner; the flagship PNAS journal instead accepts bioRxiv preprints under its standard “posting is permitted” policy, handled through ordinary manual submission. Nature and eLife each use a third and fourth mechanism again — this guide maps all of them.

    Direct submission, in the strict bioRxiv sense, means B2J: an automated transfer of files and metadata that removes the need to re-upload a manuscript at the receiving journal. That is a narrower, more specific claim than “the journal accepts preprints,” and conflating the two is the most common error in advice about preprint-to-journal workflows.

    Does PNAS accept direct submission from bioRxiv?

    Yes, but the route depends on which PNAS title is involved. PNAS’s Standard License Terms state that authors retain “the right to post the manuscript on preprint servers such as arXiv or bioRxiv,” and its editorial policies confirm that posting on preprint servers “is permitted and will not affect editorial consideration.” That is a preprint-tolerance policy, not a file-transfer mechanism.

    For an actual B2J connection — where bioRxiv pushes the manuscript and metadata into the journal’s submission system — the relevant partner on bioRxiv’s own list is PNAS Nexus, the fully open-access companion journal the National Academy of Sciences launched with Oxford University Press in 2022. Authors submitting to the flagship PNAS still upload independently and disclose the bioRxiv DOI in their cover letter or submission form.

    How does bioRxiv’s B2J transfer system actually work?

    bioRxiv describes B2J as a service that “can save authors time in submitting papers to journals or peer review services by transmitting their manuscript files and metadata directly from bioRxiv.” Authors do not re-enter author lists, funding statements or figure files; the receiving journal’s system pulls them from the preprint record.

    bioRxiv’s live Submission Guide lists 192 partner journals and peer-review services participating in B2J at the time of this analysis (mid-2026), spanning the PLOS family, EMBO’s three journals, Cell Press titles such as Cell Reports and Cell Genomics, the Royal Society’s journals, AAAS’s Science-family titles (Science Advances, Science Immunology, Science Signaling, Science Translational Medicine), Genetics Society journals, and independent review services including Review Commons.

    • Confirm the preprint version you want to transfer — revisions keep the same DOI, so specify the version-specific URL if it matters.
    • Select a reuse licence on bioRxiv (CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND or CC0) before transfer, since this travels with the metadata.
    • Check the receiving journal’s own preprint-disclosure requirement — B2J moves files, but editorial policy compliance remains the author’s responsibility.
    • Verify funder mandate compatibility (for example NIH Public Access or cOAlition S requirements) before relying on the preprint version alone for compliance.

    bioRxiv itself is operated by openRxiv, described on its own Submission Guide as “a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science communication” — a distinct entity from any single receiving journal, which is why B2J participation is a per-journal opt-in list rather than a universal feature.

    How does Nature handle bioRxiv preprints?

    Nature and most Nature-branded journals treat a bioRxiv posting as compatible with submission, not as prior publication, so authors can submit a manuscript that already exists as a bioRxiv preprint. Unlike PNAS Nexus, however, neither the flagship Nature journal nor its major sister titles appear on bioRxiv’s public B2J partner list, so there is no automated file transfer from bioRxiv into Nature’s own submission system as of this analysis.

    The practical route is the standard one: submit through the journal’s own online system and disclose the preprint DOI in the cover letter. Springer Nature separately runs “In Review,” a partnership with Research Square that posts a preprint alongside transparent, published peer-review reports for participating journals — a related but functionally different bridge from bioRxiv’s B2J, since it originates on the journal side rather than the preprint-server side.

    How does eLife’s preprint-review model differ?

    eLife’s relationship with bioRxiv is the tightest of the three, but it is not a simple file-transfer either. eLife announced its bioRxiv-integrated transfer option in 2017, letting authors “upload a preprint to bioRxiv first and then transfer their files for consideration by eLife.” In December 2020, eLife announced it would require all new submissions to be posted as preprints on bioRxiv, medRxiv or an equivalent server before review — a policy shift reported by Science/AAAS at the time.

    Since its 2023 “Publish, Review, Curate” model, eLife no longer issues accept/reject decisions after review. Every manuscript it reviews is published as a Reviewed Preprint — the bioRxiv (or medRxiv) posting itself, plus public peer reviews and an eLife Assessment summarising significance and evidence strength. The preprint version and the eLife editorial layer stay linked rather than being replaced by a separate “Version of Record.”

    Journal / publisher Preprint policy Mechanism from bioRxiv Notable detail
    PNAS (flagship) Posting permitted; not prior publication Manual submission; author discloses DOI Reviewers may see the preprint version directly
    PNAS Nexus Same NAS preprint stance Listed bioRxiv B2J partner Open-access companion journal, launched with OUP in 2022
    Nature (and most sister titles) Preprints not treated as prior publication Standard submission; not on bioRxiv’s B2J list Separate “In Review” service via Research Square for some titles
    eLife Preprint posting required since Dec 2020 Author-initiated transfer from bioRxiv Author Area (since 2017) Since 2023, all reviewed papers are published as bioRxiv-linked Reviewed Preprints

    Common questions on bioRxiv journal submission

    Does PNAS allow bioRxiv?

    Yes. PNAS’s Standard License Terms and editorial policies explicitly state that posting on preprint servers such as arXiv or bioRxiv is permitted and does not count as prior publication. Authors must disclose the preprint and its DOI during submission, and the flagship title is submitted manually rather than via bioRxiv’s automated B2J transfer.

    Who owns bioRxiv?

    bioRxiv is operated by openRxiv, which describes itself as “a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science communication.” It is independent of any single publisher, which is why individual journals — including flagship PNAS and Nature — must separately opt in to its B2J transfer list rather than automatically inheriting it.

    Is eLife a preprint?

    Not exactly. eLife is a journal whose reviewed output is published as a Reviewed Preprint — the underlying bioRxiv or medRxiv posting plus eLife’s public peer reviews and an eLife Assessment. Since its 2023 model change, eLife does not issue a separate accept/reject “Version of Record”; the linked preprint remains the article of record.

    How long does a bioRxiv submission take?

    bioRxiv’s own FAQ states manuscripts are screened and typically post within hours of submission, with full-text HTML and XML conversion following one to two days later. This screening checks for offensive or non-scientific content and biosecurity risk, not scientific validity — bioRxiv preprints are explicitly not peer-reviewed before posting.

    What this means for authors and research offices

    For corresponding authors, the practical takeaway is definitional precision: check whether a target journal is a bioRxiv B2J partner (automated transfer) or merely preprint-tolerant (manual submission plus disclosure) before assuming a “direct” route exists. The two are not interchangeable, and the difference determines whether re-uploading files is necessary.

    For research administrators and institutional research offices tracking author compliance across preprint and published versions, the distinction also affects funder-mandate reporting: a bioRxiv posting satisfies green open-access requirements under policies such as those referenced by cOAlition S signatories, independent of whether the receiving journal later uses B2J or a manual route. Institutions monitoring this pipeline should treat “preprint accepted” and “direct B2J transfer available” as two separate checklist items, not one.

    Journal-side preprint bridges will likely keep diverging rather than converging: bioRxiv’s B2J list continues to add peer-review services (such as Review Commons) alongside traditional journals, while eLife’s Reviewed Preprint model and Springer Nature’s In Review service represent journal-initiated alternatives built for transparency rather than upload convenience. Authors and research offices should expect to track policy pages per title rather than assume a single universal standard.

  • bioRxiv Alerts: Email, RSS or API Options

    bioRxiv alerts let researchers and developers track newly posted preprints in a chosen subject area without manually rechecking the site — the three core options are subject-category email alerts, per-category RSS/Atom feeds, and the public bioRxiv API, each suited to a different workflow. bioRxiv is the preprint server for biology operated by openRxiv, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing scientific communication, and it exposes the same underlying content through all three channels plus social feeds on Bluesky, Mastodon and X.

    This guide compares the four practical ways to follow new bioRxiv postings — email alerts, RSS/Atom feeds, the REST API, and social feeds — so you can pick the right combination for a literature-monitoring workflow, a lab dashboard, or an automated pipeline.

    What are bioRxiv’s alert options?

    bioRxiv is a preprint server for the biological sciences; a preprint is a complete scientific manuscript posted online before, or without, formal peer review. Because thousands of preprints are posted every week across dozens of subject categories, bioRxiv publishes the same feed of new content through four distinct channels rather than a single notification system.

    Each channel trades off timeliness, filtering precision and technical effort differently. Email alerts and RSS feeds are built for passive monitoring by individual researchers; the API is built for developers who need structured metadata inside another tool; social feeds suit anyone already working inside those platforms.

    How do bioRxiv email alerts work?

    Email alerts are the lowest-effort option for an individual researcher who wants a periodic digest. You sign up on the bioRxiv Alerts page, select one or more of bioRxiv’s roughly 30 subject categories — from Bioinformatics to Zoology — and bioRxiv emails you when matching preprints are posted.

    • Alerts can be scoped to a subject category, a keyword search, or a specific author.
    • You can add or remove subject-area alerts at any time from the same sign-up page, without deleting your account.
    • No bioRxiv account or login is required simply to receive category alerts — the sign-up form only asks for an email address.

    This makes email alerts the right default for anyone who wants new preprints in their inbox without building or maintaining anything.

    How do bioRxiv RSS feeds work?

    bioRxiv’s Alerts/RSS page publishes an Atom 1.0 feed for each subject category, plus a combined feed across all categories. Each feed returns only the most recent 30 posts for that category — a hard limit set by bioRxiv, not a filter you can extend — so an RSS reader that checks infrequently can silently miss older items once more than 30 new preprints accumulate.

    Feeds can be combined by chaining subject categories with a plus sign in the URL, and multi-word category names use an underscore in place of a space. For example, a feed combining Genomics and Bioinformatics takes the form:

    • http://connect.biorxiv.org/biorxiv_xml.php?subject=genomics+bioinformatics

    This lets a single feed reader subscription cover several adjacent subject areas — useful for interdisciplinary groups — without needing separate subscriptions per category.

    What can the bioRxiv API do that alerts and RSS can’t?

    The bioRxiv API is a pull-based REST interface returning structured JSON metadata — DOI, title, authors, category, posting date and abstract — for preprints on bioRxiv and medRxiv. Unlike email alerts or RSS, it has no built-in subject-category filter parameter and no push/webhook mechanism: a developer must query by date interval or DOI and filter the returned category field client-side.

    That distinction matters for anyone building automated tooling:

    • The API suits scheduled polling jobs, institutional repository harvesters, and research-tool dashboards that need structured metadata, not just a headline and link.
    • RSS and email alerts remain the simpler choice for a single researcher who only wants to read new titles as they appear.
    • Because the API is pull-based, any “alert” built on top of it requires you to run your own polling schedule and de-duplication logic.

    Detailed field definitions and endpoint syntax are published in bioRxiv’s own API documentation, which developers should consult directly before building a production integration.

    Should you follow bioRxiv on Bluesky, Mastodon or X?

    bioRxiv also mirrors new postings to social platforms, and this is where the biggest recent change sits — one that generic alert guides tend to miss. Beyond the long-standing X/Twitter account (@biorxivpreprint, over 140,000 followers, plus a dedicated account per subject category), bioRxiv now runs an equivalent set of per-category streams on Bluesky (e.g. biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social) and Mastodon (e.g. biorxiv_bioinfo on biologists.social).

    This matters because X restricted free API access in 2023, which reduced the reliability of X-based bots and dashboards that many labs had built to watch subject feeds. Bluesky and Mastodon’s open, API-friendly protocols make them a more dependable base for anyone building a custom preprint-monitoring bot today, rather than a nice-to-have alternative.

    Which option should you choose?

    The right channel depends on how much filtering precision you need and how much technical effort you are willing to invest.

    Channel Best for Filtering Setup effort Key limitation
    Email alerts Individual researchers wanting a digest Subject, keyword, author None (email only) No login needed, but digest cadence isn’t real time
    RSS/Atom feed Feed-reader users, interdisciplinary groups Subject category, combinable Low (add feed URL) Capped at the most recent 30 posts per category
    REST API Developers, institutional tools, dashboards None built-in; filter client-side High (build a polling job) Pull-based only, no webhook/push
    Bluesky/Mastodon/X Social monitoring, bot-building Per subject-category account Low–Medium X reach reduced since 2023 API restrictions

    For most individual researchers, subject-category email alerts remain the simplest reliable option. Developers building institutional or lab-wide monitoring tools should combine the API for structured metadata with RSS as a lightweight fallback.

    Common questions about bioRxiv alerts

    Why are my bioRxiv email alerts not working?

    Missed bioRxiv alerts are usually caused by an out-of-date subject-category selection, an alert email landing in a spam or promotions folder, or an expired confirmation link. Re-visiting the bioRxiv Alerts page and re-confirming your chosen categories resolves most cases.

    Do I need a bioRxiv account or login to set up alerts?

    No account or login is required for basic email alerts — only an email address. A bioRxiv account is only needed for actions like submitting a manuscript, posting a comment, or managing an author profile, not for receiving subject-area notifications.

    Does bioRxiv have a public API for developers?

    Yes. bioRxiv publishes a public REST API returning JSON metadata — including DOI, title, category and abstract — for content on bioRxiv and medRxiv. It is pull-based, so developers must schedule their own queries rather than receive push notifications.

    Should I track bioRxiv or arXiv for my subject area?

    Choose based on discipline, not preference: bioRxiv covers biology-specific subject categories, while arXiv covers physics, mathematics, computer science and quantitative biology. Researchers working across both fields — for example in computational biology — often need alerts from both servers rather than treating them as interchangeable.

    What this means for research-monitoring workflows

    Preprint volume keeps growing across biology subject categories, and no single channel covers every use case. A researcher who only needs a daily digest is well served by email alerts; a developer building a literature-surveillance tool for an institution needs the API’s structured metadata and should plan for its pull-based, polling architecture from the outset. Teams that previously relied solely on X-based bots should treat the 2023 API restrictions as a prompt to add Bluesky or Mastodon, or the official RSS feed, as a more durable foundation.

    Research administrators supporting open-scholarship workflows can pair these tracking methods with broader terminology in the CASRAI Dictionary when documenting how preprints fit into an institution’s research-administration processes.

  • bioRxiv or medRxiv? Choosing the Right Server for Clinical vs Basic Research

    bioRxiv or medRxiv? Choose bioRxiv for basic, non-clinical life-sciences research such as genetics, microbiology or neuroscience, and medRxiv for clinical, epidemiological or public-health research that could influence patient care. The two preprint servers do not overlap: posting the same manuscript to both is prohibited and can result in withdrawal.

    A preprint server is an open-access repository where researchers post a scientific manuscript publicly before it has completed formal peer review. bioRxiv and medRxiv are the two sibling servers operated by openRxiv for the life and health sciences respectively, and the correct choice between them depends on subject scope, not on which sounds more prestigious.

    On this page:

    What is the difference between bioRxiv and medRxiv?

    bioRxiv launched in 2013 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) as a preprint server for basic biology; medRxiv followed in 2019 as a dedicated server for clinical and health-sciences manuscripts. In March 2025, CSHL transferred governance of both platforms to openRxiv, a newly formed independent nonprofit, marking the most significant structural change since bioRxiv’s founding.

    Neither server is a journal. medRxiv is not a journal — it is a repository, and nothing posted there has been peer reviewed or certified. Both platforms carry explicit caution notices stating that preprints should not guide clinical practice, inform health-related behaviour, or be reported as established findings.

    The practical distinction authors need is scope, not scale: bioRxiv covers fundamental biological research with new data, while medRxiv is reserved for work that could plausibly influence a clinical decision, a public-health response, or patient behaviour.

    Where should clinical trials and health research go?

    Any manuscript reporting a clinical trial, an epidemiological study, or research with direct implications for diagnosis, treatment or public-health policy belongs on medRxiv. bioRxiv’s own submission guidance is explicit that new clinical trial reports and most epidemiology submissions must now go to medRxiv rather than bioRxiv.

    medRxiv applies stricter screening than bioRxiv precisely because misinterpreted clinical claims carry public-harm risk. One detail authors frequently miss: medRxiv does not accept case reports or case series, so single-patient or small-series clinical write-ups need a different outlet even when the subject matter is unambiguously medical.

    • Randomised controlled trials and other interventional studies
    • Epidemiological and public-health surveillance research
    • Studies involving patient-level clinical or health-behaviour data
    • Infectious disease, oncology, cardiovascular medicine and psychiatry manuscripts

    Where should microbiology, neuroscience and basic biology go?

    bioRxiv is the correct venue when the research advances fundamental biological understanding without a direct clinical application. Its subject categories include microbiology, neuroscience, genetics, immunology, cell biology and bioinformatics, among others, and submissions are screened by volunteer bioRxiv Affiliates chiefly for scope, plagiarism and public-harm potential.

    A microbiology paper characterising a novel bacteriophage, or a neuroscience paper mapping neural circuitry in a model organism, sits comfortably on bioRxiv provided it does not extend into patient data or treatment recommendations. The moment a microbiology study becomes an infectious-disease outbreak analysis, or a neuroscience study becomes a neurology or psychiatry treatment study, the correct server changes to medRxiv.

    How do you decide when a study sits on the border?

    Most submission confusion happens in a handful of predictable grey zones where a basic-science category on bioRxiv has a clinical counterpart on medRxiv. openRxiv’s own subject-category lists make the pairing explicit, and mapping them side by side is the fastest way to resolve a borderline decision.

    bioRxiv category (basic science) medRxiv category (clinical counterpart) Decision rule
    Genetics / Genomics Genetic and Genomic Medicine Patient-directed diagnosis or therapy → medRxiv
    Neuroscience Neurology / Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology Patient treatment or behaviour outcomes → medRxiv
    Microbiology Infectious Diseases Outbreak, surveillance or patient-cohort data → medRxiv
    Pharmacology and Toxicology Pharmacology and Therapeutics Human dosing, trial or therapeutic outcome data → medRxiv

    As a working test: if the manuscript’s conclusion could reasonably change what a clinician does at the bedside, or what a public-health body recommends, it belongs on medRxiv regardless of how “basic” the underlying technique feels. If it reports mechanism, model-organism data or method development with no direct patient or population-health claim, bioRxiv is the right home.

    Under the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ recommendations, posting to a recognised preprint server does not count as prior or duplicate publication and does not preclude subsequent journal submission — but authors should still confirm the target journal’s own preprint policy before posting either version.

    Questions authors ask

    Is bioRxiv reputable?

    Yes. bioRxiv is a well-established, widely used life-sciences preprint server operated by openRxiv, screened by volunteer affiliates for plagiarism, scope and biosafety concerns. It is not peer reviewed, but it is recognised across academic biology as a legitimate venue for early-stage research dissemination.

    Is medRxiv trustworthy?

    medRxiv applies a stricter, additional screening layer beyond bioRxiv’s because of the public-harm risk in clinical and health content. Every posted manuscript carries a prominent caution notice stating it has not been certified by peer review and should not guide clinical practice, making its scope and limitations transparent to readers.

    What is the difference between bioRxiv and medRxiv?

    bioRxiv covers basic, non-clinical life sciences; medRxiv is reserved for clinical, epidemiological and health-sciences research with potential patient or public-health impact. Screening intensity, disclaimer wording and accepted article types differ accordingly, and a single manuscript cannot be posted to both servers simultaneously.

    What are the alternatives to bioRxiv?

    Depending on field, authors also use arXiv for quantitative and computational biology work, Research Square or journal-integrated “In Review” services, and discipline-specific repositories such as ChemRxiv. None of these substitute for medRxiv when a manuscript is clinically actionable.

    What this means for authors and institutions

    For individual authors, the server choice is a compliance decision, not a branding one: submitting a clinical manuscript to the wrong server risks a request to withdraw and resubmit, delaying the timestamp priority a preprint is meant to secure. Research administrators tracking institutional preprint activity — an increasingly routine part of research administration workflows — should build the bioRxiv/medRxiv scope test into pre-submission checklists rather than leaving it to individual author judgement.

    For institutions and publishers, the March 2025 move to independent openRxiv governance is worth tracking: it signals that preprint infrastructure for biology and medicine is now managed as permanent scholarly-communication infrastructure rather than a single laboratory’s side project, with implications for long-term archival stability and policy planning. Definitions of related terms, including preprint, postprint and version of record, are maintained in the CASRAI Research Administration Dictionary.

    The practical rule holds regardless of field: match the manuscript’s real-world consequence, not its disciplinary label, to the server’s scope, and treat the bioRxiv/medRxiv boundary as a public-harm question rather than a prestige one.

  • 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 Preprint Server: NIH, Wellcome and Gates Compared

    Funder preprint requirements diverge sharply in 2026: the Gates Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) now mandate deposit on a recognised server such as the preprint server bioRxiv or its sister site medRxiv, the NIH indexes eligible preprints in PubMed Central without treating them as compliance, and Wellcome requires them only in defined public-health-emergency scenarios. Research administrators tracking multi-funder portfolios need a single reference for which rule applies where.

    A preprint server is an open-access repository — such as bioRxiv for biology or medRxiv for health sciences — where researchers post a complete but not-yet-peer-reviewed manuscript for immediate public access. Both platforms are operated by openRxiv, a nonprofit formed in 2025 specifically to run bioRxiv and medRxiv independently of their founding host institution.

    What Is a Preprint Server Like bioRxiv?

    A preprint server is a repository for manuscripts that have not yet completed formal peer review. bioRxiv, co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever, launched in November 2013 as a life-sciences equivalent to arXiv. Its companion site, medRxiv, covers health and clinical research and applies additional pre-posting screening because of the sensitivity of medical findings.

    Submissions to both platforms undergo basic scrutiny — plagiarism screening, an appropriateness check, and a safeguarding review — but not peer review itself. Roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are later published in a peer-reviewed journal, and by early 2026 bioRxiv was recording around four million article downloads a month, according to a Nature analysis of the server’s first 13 years.

    Which Funders Require Preprinting in 2026?

    Funder policy on preprints splits into three tiers: outright mandates, conditional requirements, and pure encouragement. The table below summarises the position of four major research funders as of 2026.

    Funder Preprint requirement Effective date Compliance role
    Gates Foundation Mandatory — deposit before or at journal submission, CC BY licence 1 January 2025 Core requirement of the Open Access Policy
    HHMI Mandatory for HHMI investigators, scholars and Janelia scientists 1 January 2026 Preprint required before journal submission
    Wellcome Trust Required only for research with significant public health implications; encouraged otherwise Ongoing Accepted as a fallback open access route if a fully OA journal or Europe PMC deposit is unavailable
    NIH Not required Preprint Pilot ongoing Discoverability only — does not satisfy the NIH Public Access Policy

    Two funders — Gates and HHMI — now treat preprinting as a compulsory step in the research lifecycle. NIH and Wellcome instead fold preprints into a wider menu of open access routes, which is the detail most other coverage of this topic omits.

    How Does the NIH Preprint Pilot Treat bioRxiv Deposits?

    The NIH Preprint Pilot makes eligible NIH-funded preprints — including bioRxiv and medRxiv deposits — discoverable in PubMed Central and PubMed, tagged clearly as preprints rather than peer-reviewed literature. This is a discoverability mechanism, not a compliance mechanism.

    Posting a preprint does not fulfil the NIH Public Access Policy. Grantees must still deposit the final, accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in PMC. NIH does, however, permit researchers to cite preprints in grant applications and progress reports, which gives early findings some formal standing without changing the underlying compliance obligation.

    Does Wellcome Require or Just Encourage Preprints?

    Wellcome strongly encourages preprinting across its funded portfolio and requires it specifically where a disease outbreak or comparable public health emergency makes rapid sharing a priority. Outside those defined scenarios, preprinting is not compulsory.

    Wellcome’s primary open access compliance routes are publication in a fully open access journal or deposit of the author’s accepted manuscript in Europe PMC. A CC BY-licensed preprint is accepted as a valid compliance route only if neither of those primary routes is available — a fallback position, not a default requirement.

    What Changed When bioRxiv and medRxiv Became openRxiv?

    bioRxiv and medRxiv were hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) from launch until 11 March 2025, when ownership transferred to openRxiv, a newly formed nonprofit dedicated solely to running the two preprint servers. This is a provenance detail funder-policy roundups routinely miss, and it matters for research administrators: openRxiv, not CSHL, is now the governing body whose terms of use and licensing options apply to deposits made under Gates, HHMI, Wellcome and NIH-linked research.

    The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has funded platform development on both sites since 2017, part of a broader pattern of philanthropic infrastructure investment that runs parallel to — and distinct from — the funder mandates covered above.

    Common Questions About bioRxiv and Preprint Servers

    Is bioRxiv a preprint server?

    Yes. bioRxiv is an open-access preprint server for the biological sciences, hosting complete but not-yet-peer-reviewed manuscripts. It does not conduct peer review itself, though submissions undergo basic screening and reviews from journals or platforms such as Review Commons may be posted alongside preprints.

    Is it free to publish on bioRxiv?

    Yes. Authors register without charge and there is no fee to deposit a manuscript on bioRxiv or medRxiv. This zero-cost deposit model is one reason funders increasingly treat preprinting as a low-friction first step toward full open access compliance.

    What is a preprint server?

    A preprint server is an online repository where researchers post manuscripts before or during formal peer review, giving the wider research community immediate access to findings. bioRxiv and medRxiv are the leading discipline-specific examples in the life and health sciences.

    What are the disadvantages of preprints?

    Preprints add an extra step to the publishing process, are not peer-reviewed at the point of posting, and can attract premature media coverage or public comment before findings are validated. Some journals and funders still weigh these risks against the benefit of faster dissemination.

    What This Means for Institutions and Researchers

    Research administrators managing grants across multiple funders now need to track preprint policy at the individual-funder level rather than assuming a single institutional rule applies. A grantee funded jointly by Gates and NIH, for example, must preprint to satisfy Gates while still separately depositing the accepted manuscript in PMC for NIH.

    • Confirm licence requirements before deposit — Gates and HHMI specify CC BY, which is not the default licence offered on every server.
    • Do not treat NIH Preprint Pilot indexing as equivalent to Public Access Policy compliance — the two are separate obligations.
    • Check Wellcome’s public-health-emergency criteria before assuming preprinting is optional on a given grant.
    • Record the openRxiv terms of use in grant files, since bioRxiv and medRxiv are no longer governed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

    The Direction of Travel for Funder Preprint Policy

    The trend across 2025 and 2026 runs firmly toward mandatory preprinting among the largest philanthropic funders, while NIH and Wellcome hold a more conditional position rooted in their existing open access frameworks. Institutions should expect more funders to follow the Gates and HHMI model as preprint infrastructure matures under openRxiv’s independent stewardship. Research administration teams that build funder-specific preprint checklists now, rather than applying a single blanket policy, will be better placed as more mandates convert from encouragement to requirement.

    For related definitions and terminology used across research administration and open access compliance, see the CASRAI Dictionary and the research administration resource hub.

  • 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.

  • Research Square vs bioRxiv: Ownership & Fees

    Research Square vs bioRxiv is, at its core, a nonprofit-versus-commercial question: Research Square is a preprint platform owned by the for-profit publisher Springer Nature, while bioRxiv and medRxiv are nonprofit servers now governed by openRxiv, an independent 501(c)(3) that took over from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in March 2025. Both are free for authors to use, but the ownership structure behind each one shapes fees, licensing control, data governance and long-term archival continuity in ways that matter for anyone advising authors on where to post.

    A preprint server is an online platform where researchers deposit manuscripts before, or independently of, formal peer review. Research Square, bioRxiv and medRxiv are three of the most widely used servers in the life, health and biomedical sciences, and authors are increasingly asked to choose between them without understanding what sits behind each brand.

    What Is the Core Difference Between Research Square and bioRxiv?

    The core difference is legal ownership and mission accountability, not scope or screening rigour. Research Square traces to American Journal Experts (AJE); Springer Nature took a minority stake in the Research Square platform in 2018, became majority owner in 2020, and completed full acquisition of Research Square Company in 2022. It is, today, a wholly commercial subsidiary of a for-profit publishing group.

    bioRxiv was founded in 2013 by John Inglis and Richard Sever at CSHL, a nonprofit research institution. medRxiv followed in 2019 as a partnership between CSHL, Yale University and BMJ. In March 2025, governance of both servers passed from CSHL to openRxiv, a newly formed independent nonprofit whose stated mission is “creating opportunities for sharing, discovering, and advancing preprints in the life and health sciences” — with a dedicated board and a Scientific and Medical Advisory Board of researchers overseeing policy.

    Feature Research Square bioRxiv / medRxiv (via openRxiv)
    Governing entity Springer Nature (for-profit publisher) openRxiv (independent nonprofit, 501(c)(3))
    Platform launched 2016, under Research Square Company bioRxiv 2013; medRxiv 2019
    Ownership shift Minority stake 2018 → majority 2020 → full acquisition 2022 Transitioned from CSHL to independent nonprofit, March 2025
    Author posting fee Free Free
    Sustainability model Cross-subsidised by Springer Nature publishing and AJE author-services revenue Philanthropic and institutional grants (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sergey Brin Family Foundation, Robert Lourie Foundation, partner universities)
    Default licence CC-BY 4.0 required for all preprints Author’s choice: CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC-ND, or no reuse without permission
    Journal integration In Review, tied to 1,000+ participating journals No equivalent journal-submission integration
    Bulk text-and-data-mining access No published bulk TDM programme; access via Crossref metadata and the site Monthly XML/PDF corpus via a requester-pays AWS S3 bucket, plus a public metadata API
    Long-term preservation Portico Portico

    Who Pays, and How Is Each Platform Funded?

    Neither model charges authors to post a preprint — that much is identical. What differs is where the money to run the platform comes from, and what that implies about future incentives. Research Square’s operating costs are absorbed by Springer Nature’s commercial publishing business and by AJE’s paid author-services division (editing, translation and related products), which Research Square continues to cross-sell alongside free preprint posting.

    openRxiv, by contrast, depends on renewable philanthropic and institutional grants rather than a parent company’s revenue. Its principal funders include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, the Robert Lourie Foundation and a consortium of supporting universities including Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Yale and the University of Washington. That is a genuine trade-off, not a straightforward win for either side:

    • Research Square’s commercial backing gives it predictable, revenue-linked funding, but ties its long-term direction to Springer Nature’s corporate strategy.
    • openRxiv’s nonprofit funding is mission-locked by governance structure, but depends on grant renewal cycles rather than a guaranteed revenue stream.

    Who Owns and Controls Author Data?

    Ownership of the underlying manuscript stays with authors on both platforms — this is not a copyright grab by either side. The meaningful difference is licensing control and third-party data access. Research Square requires every posted preprint to carry a CC-BY 4.0 licence, which is the most permissive open licence and maximises reuse rights for readers, but leaves authors no choice in the matter.

    bioRxiv and medRxiv give authors a menu of licence options — CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC-ND, or a “no reuse without permission” setting — and authors can change the licence on an existing preprint after posting. That is more author control, though funders that mandate CC-BY (a growing norm, including under several cOAlition S-aligned policies) require authors to actively select it rather than receiving it by default.

    The two models also diverge sharply on bulk data access. openRxiv publishes a full monthly XML/PDF text-and-data-mining corpus through a requester-pays AWS S3 bucket, alongside a public metadata API — an open-infrastructure commitment consistent with nonprofit, grant-funded governance. Research Square does not publish an equivalent bulk TDM feed; third-party discovery of Research Square content runs through Crossref DOI metadata and the platform’s own search interface rather than a dedicated open corpus.

    What Long-Term Archival Guarantees Does Each Model Offer?

    Both platforms use the same third-party preservation service: Portico provides perpetual-access archiving for preprints posted to Research Square, bioRxiv and medRxiv alike, so the archive itself is not where the two models diverge.

    The real difference is organisational continuity risk. A commercial platform’s archival commitments are ultimately corporate policy that could change with ownership or strategy; a nonprofit platform’s commitments are set by a mission-bound board, though it carries the separate risk of grant-funding renewal. Advising authors on a multi-decade preprint record means treating “who governs the archive” as distinct from “where is the archive stored.”

    Common Questions About Research Square and bioRxiv

    Is bioRxiv reputable?

    Yes. bioRxiv is widely cited across molecular and cell biology, screens submissions for plagiarism and non-scientific content, and is now governed by openRxiv, an independent nonprofit with a Scientific and Medical Advisory Board. Its reputation rests on community adoption and transparent, nonprofit governance rather than commercial incentives.

    Does bioRxiv count as published?

    No. A bioRxiv or medRxiv preprint is not peer-reviewed and does not constitute formal publication. The ICMJE treats preprints as legitimate scholarly communication, not duplicate publication, but funders and REF-style assessment exercises generally still require the peer-reviewed version for compliance credit.

    Is bioRxiv a preprint?

    bioRxiv is not itself a preprint — it is the server that hosts preprints. A preprint is the individual manuscript version posted before or independent of peer review; bioRxiv is the nonprofit infrastructure, now under openRxiv, that makes that posting possible for life-science research.

    What are the alternatives to bioRxiv?

    Alternatives include medRxiv for clinical and public-health research, Research Square for multidisciplinary and journal-integrated posting, and repository-style options such as arXiv, the Open Science Framework, Figshare and Zenodo. The right choice depends on discipline, human-subjects status and whether journal-integrated posting matters.

    What This Means for Authors and Research Administrators

    For most authors, the nonprofit-versus-commercial distinction will not change whether posting is free — it usually is, on both models. It should change how administrators frame the advice they give:

    • Explain that Research Square’s mandatory CC-BY licence maximises reuse but removes licensing choice, while bioRxiv/medRxiv give authors more control over which licence applies.
    • Flag that researchers doing large-scale corpus analysis will find far richer bulk access through openRxiv’s TDM feeds than through Research Square.
    • Note that archival preservation (Portico) is equivalent across models — the open question is who controls future platform policy, not the archive.
    • Treat commercial ownership as a disclosure point, not a disqualifier: Springer Nature’s backing gives Research Square’s In Review workflow journal-integration value a nonprofit model does not replicate.

    As more research administration offices build formal preprint guidance into their researcher-facing documentation, the originating business model behind a server deserves the same disclosure as its discipline coverage or screening depth. Authors are entitled to know not just where their manuscript will sit, but who ultimately governs the platform holding it — a nonprofit board answerable to a research mission, or a commercial parent answerable to shareholders.

    Last updated: 3 July 2026.

  • bioRxiv vs arXiv: Two Funding Models Compared

    bioRxiv vs arXiv is fundamentally a contrast in governance age and funding model: bioRxiv now operates under openRxiv, an independent nonprofit launched in March 2025 with a $16 million Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant, while arXiv left Cornell University on 1 July 2026 to become arXiv, Inc., a member-governed Delaware nonprofit. Both are open-access preprint repositories, but the organisations behind them have chosen different paths to long-term sustainability.

    A preprint server is a repository that distributes complete but not-yet-peer-reviewed research manuscripts, allowing authors to establish priority and gather feedback before formal journal publication. The choice between bioRxiv and arXiv is usually made on subject scope — but the more consequential difference, and the subject of this analysis, is who pays for each server and who is accountable for keeping it running.

    What is the core difference between bioRxiv and arXiv?

    bioRxiv is a preprint repository for the life sciences, co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013 and originally hosted at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). arXiv is the older, broader repository, launched in 1991 by physicist Paul Ginsparg to serve physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics and economics.

    The subject-matter split is well documented elsewhere. What is less widely reported is that both organisations have, within the past sixteen months, exited the institutions that originally housed them and adopted new independent governance structures — bioRxiv (with its clinical-sciences sibling medRxiv) in March 2025, and arXiv on 1 July 2026. That timing makes a direct governance comparison newly possible.

    Who funds and governs bioRxiv today?

    bioRxiv and medRxiv are now operated by openRxiv, an independent nonprofit that launched in March 2025 after both servers transferred out of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The spin-out was funded by a $16 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), with additional foundational support from CSHL, BMJ Group and Yale School of Medicine.

    openRxiv runs a researcher-led governance board rather than a single-institution reporting line. Its board is chaired by Scott Fraser, CZI’s vice-president of science grant programmes, and includes medRxiv co-founder Harlan Krumholz (Yale cardiologist), Princeton University president emeritus Shirley Tilghman, and CSHL president Bruce Stillman. This puts editorial and operational oversight in the hands of named scientists rather than a university administration.

    The scale bioRxiv now supports is substantial: the server has posted roughly 268,000 preprints from around 970,000 authors, adding approximately 4,000 new submissions a month, while medRxiv has posted around 64,000 preprints and adds roughly 1,000 monthly. Authors cannot post the same manuscript to both servers — submissions must be routed to bioRxiv for basic biology or medRxiv for clinical and public-health work.

    How is arXiv’s new independent nonprofit structured?

    arXiv formally left Cornell University on 1 July 2026 to become arXiv, Inc., a standalone Delaware nonprofit corporation. Under Delaware nonprofit law, arXiv, Inc. was established by two founding Members — the Simons Foundation and Cornell University — who appointed the initial Board of Directors and secured the organisation’s IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

    The Board of Directors will hold up to twelve seats, with Cornell and Simons Foundation serving as founding Members for up to five years before the seat structure opens further. arXiv, Inc. launched with three years of operating funding already secured, and Simons Foundation has committed support for at least five years.

    Unlike openRxiv’s grant-anchored model, arXiv layers a community membership programme on top of philanthropic funding: participating institutions pay up to $10,000 a year, scaled to the volume of preprints they post, in exchange for a formal voice in governance and access to usage data. Recent gift and grant activity illustrates the scale of philanthropic backing involved — arXiv received a combined $10 million from the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation in 2023, and a further $7 million from Schmidt Sciences and NASA in November 2025 to fund cloud migration and codebase modernisation, according to Cornell Chronicle and the arXiv blog.

    bioRxiv vs arXiv: governance and funding at a glance

    Feature bioRxiv (via openRxiv) arXiv (arXiv, Inc.)
    Founded November 2013 1991
    Field focus Life sciences (medRxiv covers clinical/health) Physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, economics
    Prior institutional host Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, until March 2025 Cornell University, until 1 July 2026
    Current governing body openRxiv (independent nonprofit, launched March 2025) arXiv, Inc. (independent Delaware nonprofit, launched 1 July 2026)
    Governance structure Researcher-led board chaired by CZI’s Scott Fraser Up to 12-member Board of Directors; Simons Foundation and Cornell as founding Members
    Anchor funder / grant $16m Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant (2025) $10m Simons Foundation/NSF (2023); $7m Schmidt Sciences/NASA (2025)
    Funding model Philanthropic grant-backed nonprofit Community membership fees (up to $10,000/institution) plus philanthropic grants
    Scale ~268,000 preprints, ~4,000 new/month 185,692 new submissions in 2022; 5m+ monthly active users

    What sustainability lessons does this hold for research infrastructure?

    Both transitions solve the same underlying problem — a critical piece of scholarly infrastructure had outgrown dependence on a single host institution’s budget and administrative structure — but they reach different equilibria. openRxiv concentrates funding risk in a small number of major philanthropic grants and a named scientific board; arXiv, Inc. spreads risk across founding-Member philanthropy, a rotating board, and a paying community membership base that also confers governance voice.

    For research-administration audiences, the comparison matters beyond preprints. Standards bodies, taxonomies and shared research infrastructure face the identical sustainability question: who pays when the founding host can no longer carry the cost, and who is accountable once it leaves? arXiv’s membership-fee model gives institutional funders a formal stake in governance decisions, which can improve long-term buy-in but adds administrative overhead; openRxiv’s grant-concentrated model is faster to stand up but leaves the organisation more exposed to a single funder’s priorities.

    • Diversified funding (multiple grants plus membership fees) tends to reduce single-point-of-failure risk, at the cost of governance complexity.
    • A named, credentialed scientific board — as both openRxiv and arXiv, Inc. now have — signals accountability to funders and the research community alike.
    • A founding-institution “off-ramp” clause (Cornell and Simons Foundation’s five-year Member term) gives a transition period without permanent institutional lock-in.

    Neither model has a multi-year track record yet: openRxiv is little more than a year old, and arXiv, Inc. has been operating for two days at the time of writing. The next eighteen to thirty-six months, as both organisations report their first independent financial results, will be the real test of which governance structure proves more resilient.

    Common questions about bioRxiv and arXiv

    Is arXiv the same as bioRxiv?

    No. arXiv and bioRxiv are separate organisations with different founding dates, subject scopes and governance structures. arXiv (1991) covers physics, mathematics and computer science and is now run by the independent nonprofit arXiv, Inc.; bioRxiv (2013) covers life sciences and is run by the separate nonprofit openRxiv.

    Who owns bioRxiv?

    bioRxiv has no single owner; it is operated by openRxiv, an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit that launched in March 2025 after transferring from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The transition was backed by a $16 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and governed by a researcher-led board.

    Is bioRxiv considered a publication?

    No. bioRxiv describes itself as a repository for preprints — complete but unpublished manuscripts that have not undergone peer review. Two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are later published in peer-reviewed journals, but the preprint itself is not treated as the final scholarly record.

    Is arXiv a respected journal?

    arXiv is not a journal at all — it is a moderated preprint repository. Submissions are checked by volunteer moderators for scope and appropriateness but are not peer-reviewed in the journal sense, even though arXiv is widely regarded as authoritative within physics, mathematics and computer science.

    Both organisations illustrate that community-run research infrastructure now increasingly separates itself from any single host institution, replacing it with dedicated nonprofit governance and diversified funding. Institutions engaged in research administration evaluating which model to support — or which to emulate for other shared infrastructure — should watch how each organisation reports its first full year of independent finances.

  • bioRxiv Preprint DOI: How Versions Are Cited

    Every bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint receives a single, permanent DOI that stays constant across all revisions — the DOI always resolves to the newest version, and a specific version (v1, v2, v3) is cited by appending the version number to the DOI-based URL, not by requesting a new identifier.

    A bioRxiv preprint DOI is a Crossref-registered digital object identifier assigned to a manuscript once openRxiv’s screening team approves it for posting, and it serves as the manuscript’s permanent citation handle for the life of the record. Understanding how that identifier behaves across revisions — and how it eventually connects to a journal’s version of record — is essential for anyone citing, tracking, or administering preprint outputs.

    What is a bioRxiv preprint DOI?

    A bioRxiv or medRxiv DOI is issued the moment a submission clears openRxiv’s screening process, which bioRxiv’s Submission Guide states typically takes 24–72 hours. The identifier is deposited with Crossref, the DOI registration agency used by both servers, and it is what makes a preprint “citable and part of the scientific record” rather than a private working draft.

    Since December 1, 2025, all newly posted bioRxiv and medRxiv articles use the prefix 10.64898, replacing the legacy 10.1101 prefix used throughout the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) era. According to openRxiv’s own explainer, published November 18, 2025, articles posted before that date keep their existing 10.1101 DOIs unchanged — nothing needs to be re-cited or updated by authors or readers; only new submissions carry the new prefix.

    The DOI suffix is not arbitrary. Since December 11, 2019, it has embedded the date the author approved the submission for posting (e.g., 2026.01.01.123456), which lets a reader estimate an article’s age directly from the citation string, much as a volume and year do for a journal article. DOIs assigned before that date used a simple six-digit suffix instead.

    How do bioRxiv and medRxiv assign DOIs across versions?

    openRxiv assigns exactly one DOI per article, and that single DOI covers every subsequent version. When an author submits a revision, the new version posts under the same DOI; the identifier’s landing page always resolves to the most recent version, while earlier versions remain permanently accessible via the article’s Info/History tab.

    This is a deliberate design choice, not a technical limitation. openRxiv has stated that “opinions differ on whether each version of a preprint should have its own DOI,” and different repositories take different approaches — but for bioRxiv and medRxiv, version-specific DOIs are not issued. A revision is only assigned a brand-new DOI if its content has changed so substantially that the author submits it as an entirely new manuscript rather than a revision.

    Because Crossref registration is not instantaneous, a newly posted preprint’s DOI URL can take up to 24 hours to resolve. During that narrow window, linking directly to the bioRxiv or medRxiv article page — rather than the DOI — is the more reliable option for time-sensitive sharing.

    Attribute Detail
    Current DOI prefix (from 1 Dec 2025) 10.64898
    Legacy DOI prefix (CSHL era, pre-Dec 2025) 10.1101
    Suffix format (post 11 Dec 2019) YYYY.MM.DD.###### — embeds author-approval date
    DOIs per article One; always resolves to the latest version
    Version-specific citation Append version number to the article URL, e.g. …/10.1101/2019.12.11.123456v2
    bioRxiv ISSN (electronic) 2692-8205 (NLM Catalog / ISSN Portal)
    medRxiv launch June 2019, spun off from bioRxiv for clinical and health-science research
    Registration agency Crossref

    How do you cite bioRxiv v1 vs v3 correctly?

    Because a single DOI serves every version, citing “v3” requires more than the bare DOI. bioRxiv’s own FAQ gives the format directly: cite the DOI, then append the version-specific URL if a particular version matters to the claim being made.

    The standard citation format is: Author AN, Author BT. Year. Title. bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2019.12.11.123456. To pin the citation to version 2 specifically, this becomes: doi: 10.1101/2019.12.11.123456 version 2, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.11.123456v2. The same logic applies to medRxiv and to articles carrying the newer 10.64898 prefix.

    Version specificity matters most when:

    • A reviewer or reader needs to see exactly what was public at the time a claim was made or a decision was taken
    • An earlier version contained results, figures, or conclusions later revised or retracted
    • A funder, journal, or regulator requires a dated, auditable snapshot of the manuscript (relevant to research administration compliance workflows)

    Most citations across preprint servers are not version-specific — the majority of preprints only ever have a single version — so appending a version tag is the exception, applied only when precision genuinely matters. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) explicitly encourages citing preprints in grant applications, stating in its policy on Reporting Preprints and Other Interim Research Products that it “encourages investigators to use interim research products, such as preprints, to speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor of their work.”

    How does the preprint DOI link to the published journal article?

    When a preprinted manuscript is subsequently accepted by a journal, openRxiv’s matching algorithms detect the connection and update the preprint’s Crossref DOI metadata to point to the journal article’s DOI. This link typically appears within approximately two weeks of formal journal publication, and the corresponding author receives a confirmation request by email.

    This bidirectional metadata relationship is what allows citation trackers, institutional repositories, and CRIS systems to treat the preprint and the published article as related outputs of the same research rather than duplicate records. Ideally the journal’s own DOI record reciprocally references the preprint, though bioRxiv’s FAQ notes this does not always happen in practice — a gap that research administrators should check for when auditing an author’s output list.

    A related, often underappreciated fact: roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints go on to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, according to meta-research published in eLife (Abdill & Blekhman, 2019) — meaning the DOI-linking mechanism is relevant to the majority of postings, not a rare edge case.

    Common questions about bioRxiv and medRxiv DOIs

    Does bioRxiv have a DOI?

    Yes. Every bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint is assigned a DOI registered with Crossref once it clears screening. This makes preprints citable and part of the permanent scientific record, indexed by Google Scholar, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, Europe PMC, and the Preprint Citation Index in Web of Science.

    How do you cite a bioRxiv preprint?

    Cite the author list, posting year, title, and the DOI — for example, “bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2019.12.11.123456.” To cite a specific version, append the version-specific URL after the DOI, following the format published on bioRxiv’s official FAQ page.

    Is it okay to cite bioRxiv preprints?

    Yes, with a caveat: bioRxiv states plainly that manuscripts “receive DOIs and thus are citable,” but they are not peer-reviewed at the time of posting. Readers and citers should note the preprint status explicitly and check whether a peer-reviewed version now exists before relying on it as a final source.

    Do all preprint versions have their own DOI?

    No. openRxiv assigns one DOI per article, shared by every revision. The DOI resolves to the newest version by default; earlier versions stay accessible through the article’s history tab and are cited by adding a version tag to the URL, not by obtaining a separate identifier.

    Why this matters for research administrators

    For institutions managing CRIS records, REF-style output audits, or funder compliance reporting, the DOI-prefix transition and the single-DOI-per-article model both have practical consequences. Output lists built before December 2025 will show 10.1101 DOIs; anything posted afterward will show 10.64898 — both are equally valid, permanent identifiers, and neither supersedes the other. Automated deduplication or metadata-harvesting scripts that pattern-match on the “10.1101” prefix should be updated to also recognise 10.64898, or they risk silently dropping newly posted preprints from institutional repositories.

    The version-tracking model also has implications for research integrity workflows: because withdrawal notices and corrections are recorded against the same DOI rather than issued as a new identifier, institutions monitoring compliance should check an article’s Info/History tab — not just its DOI — before citing it in a report. As preprints continue to be formally recognised in NIH and UKRI reporting frameworks, treating the DOI as a static citation string, disconnected from its version history, is no longer sufficient practice for accurate scholarly record-keeping.