Type of site | Science |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
URL | biorxiv |
Commercial | No |
Launched | November 2013 |
Current status | Online |
bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive" [1] [2] ) is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. [3] [4] It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). [5]
As preprints, papers hosted on bioRxiv are not peer-reviewed, but undergo basic screening and checked against plagiarism. However, peer reviews from other sources may be posted alongside preprints. Moreover, readers may post comments.
It has been measured that two thirds of the papers posted in bioRxiv are later published in peer-reviewed journals. [6] BioRxiv, and its sister site, medRxiv, have been major sources for the dissemination of COVID-19 research. [7] [8]
BioRxiv was inspired by and intends to complement the arXiv repository, which mostly focuses on mathematics, physics and connected disciplines, launched in 1991 by Paul Ginsparg (who also serves on the bioRxiv advisory board). It received support from both the CSHL and the Lourie Foundation. [9] Additional funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was confirmed in April 2017. [10] [11]
Prior to the establishment of bioRxiv, biological scientists were divided on the issue of having a dedicated preprint open-access repository. [3] Many had concerns of having their research scooped by competitors and losing their claim to discovery. However, several geneticists had submitted papers to the "quantitative biology" section of the arXiv repository (launched in 2003) and no longer had those concerns, as they could point to preprints to support their claims of discovery. [3] [12]
Jocelyn Kaiser of Science said that in its first year, the repository had "attracted a modest but growing stream of papers", having hosted 824 preprints. [13] Over 20,000 tweets were made about bioRxiv-hosted preprints in 2015. [9]
February 2016, the submission rate to bioRxiv had steadily increased from ≈60 to ≈200 per month. [9] In 2017, the number of monthly submissions rose from over 800 in March [14] to more than 1000 in July [15] with a total number of 10,722 papers submitted in 2017. [16]
In the year of 2018, a total of 20,000 manuscripts were submitted, which results in a monthly average of 1600 papers. [17]
In the year 2019, over 31,000 manuscripts were submitted, which results in a monthly average of 2600 papers (which accelerated to just over 3000 papers per month in the last quarter of 2019). [18]
The number of yearly manuscripts rose to 38,088 in 2020, then slightly increased to 40,223 in 2021, followed by 36,417 manuscripts being published in 2022. As of December 31, 2022, almost 180,000 preprints have been accepted in total. [19]
bioRxiv accepts preprints in the following disciplines
As a result of bioRxiv's popularity, many biology journals have updated their policies on preprints, [9] [13] clarifying they do not consider preprints to be a 'prior publication' for purpose of the Ingelfinger rule.
The bioRxiv to Journals (B2J) initiative allows authors to submit their manuscript directly to a journal's submission system through bioRxiv. As of May 2020, 177 journals participate in the initiative. [1]
In 2019, BioRxiv started allowing posting reviews alongside preprints, in addition to allowing comments on preprints. The reviews can come from journals or from platforms such as Review Commons. [20]
arXiv is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, mathematical finance and economics, which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Some publishers also grant permission for authors to archive the peer-reviewed postprint. Begun on August 14, 1991, arXiv.org passed the half-million-article milestone on October 3, 2008, had hit a million by the end of 2014 and two million by the end of 2021. As of April 2021, the submission rate is about 16,000 articles per month.
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version available free, before or after a paper is published in a journal.
A postprint is a digital draft of a research journal article after it has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication, but before it has been typeset and formatted by the journal.
Open science is the movement to make scientific research and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks. It encompasses practices such as publishing open research, campaigning for open access, encouraging scientists to practice open-notebook science, broader dissemination and engagement in science and generally making it easier to publish, access and communicate scientific knowledge.
Nature Precedings was an open access electronic preprint repository of scholarly work in the fields of biomedical sciences, chemistry, and earth sciences. It ceased accepting new submissions as of April 3, 2012.
Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are:
An overlay journal or overlay ejournal is a type of open access academic journal, almost always an online electronic journal (ejournal), that does not produce its own content, but selects from texts that are already freely available online. While many overlay journals derive their content from preprint servers, others, such as the Lund Medical Faculty Monthly, contain mainly papers published by commercial publishers, but with links to self-archived preprint or postprints when possible.
Authorea is an online collaborative writing tool that allows researchers to write, cite, collaborate, host data and publish. It has been described as "Google Docs for Scientists". It has been owned by the commercial publishing company Wiley through Atypon since 2018.
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, or simply Biohub, is a nonprofit research organization. In addition to supporting and conducting original research, CZ Biohub acts as a hub and fosters science collaboration between UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford. The Biohub is funded by a $600 million contribution from Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. It was co-led by Stephen Quake and Joseph DeRisi from its inception in 2016 until 2022, when Quake left to become president of the Biohub Network. Sandra Schmid joined as Chief Scientific Officer in 2020.
PsyArXiv is a preprint repository for the psychological sciences opened in September 2016 and officially launched in December 2016. It is hosted by the Center for Open Science. The preprint service was inspired by the arXiv repository. The service allows researchers to upload manuscripts regarding psychology and related fields prior to peer review. As of April 2017, it is indexed by Google Scholar.
SocArXiv is an online paper server for the social sciences founded by sociologist Philip N. Cohen in partnership with the non-profit Center for Open Science. It is an open archive based on the ArXiv preprint server model used for the natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science. The site describes itself as an "open archive of the social sciences, [which] provides a free, non-profit, open access platform for social scientists to upload working papers, preprints, and published papers, with the option to link data and code." It also hosts papers in the areas of arts and humanities, education, and law.
In India, the Open Access movement started in May 2004, when two workshops were organized by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. In 2006, the National Knowledge Commission in its recommendations proposed that "access to knowledge is the most fundamental way of increasing the opportunities and reach of individuals and groups". In 2011, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) began requiring that its grantees provide open access to funded research, the Open Access India forum formulated a draft policy on Open Access for India. The Shodhganga, a digital repository for theses, was also established in 2011 with the aim of promoting and preserving academic research. The University Grants Commission (UGC) made it mandatory for scholars to deposit their theses in Shodhganga, as per the Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M. Phil./Ph.D. Degrees Regulations, 2016. Currently, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists 326 open access journals published in India, of which 233 have no fees.
EarthArXiv is both a preprint server and a volunteer community devoted to open scholarly communication. As a preprint server, EarthArXiv publishes articles from all subdomains of Earth Science and related domains of planetary science. These publications are versions of scholarly papers that precede publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals. EarthArXiv is not itself a journal and does not evaluate the scientific quality of a paper. Instead, EarthArXiv serves as a platform for free hosting and rapid dissemination of scientific results. The EarthArXiv platform assigns each submission a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), therefore assigning provenance and making it citable in other scholarly works. EarthArXiv's mission is to promote open access, share open access and preprint resources, and participate in shared governance of the preprint server and its policies. EarthArXiv was launched on October 23, 2017.
Jessica Polka is a biochemist and the Executive Director of ASAPbio, a non-profit initiative promoting innovation and transparency via preprints and open peer review. She was one of the organizers of a recent meeting they held on scholarly communication.
ChemRxiv is an open access preprint archive for chemistry. It is operated by the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry and German Chemical Society. The new preprint server was announced already in 2016, but was only opened online in 2017. Initially, editors of ACS journals were skeptical and only 80% of the editors allowed submissions to be uploaded to the preprint server in 2017. In 2019 the Chinese Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of Japan joined as co-owners of the preprint server.
medRxiv is an online journal publishing medical research in all disciplines of the health sciences. It distributes publications in the areas of medicine and clinical research without charge to the reader.
AfricArXiv is an open-access repository for preprints of academic publications which are either about Africa or by African scientists. The platform was established in 2018. It was established to make preprint servers more available in various fields and regions. Its establishment happen during trends to provide more digital services to support science in Africa.
Peer Community in (PCI) is a non-profit scientific organization that offers an editorial process of open science by creating specific communities of researchers reviewing and recommending preprints in their field. Since 2021, a new journal, Peer Community Journal, publishes recommended preprints.