BioRxiv

bioRxiv is a preprint repository for the biological sciences launched in November 2013. It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). As preprints, papers hosted on bioRxiv are not peer-reviewed, but undergo basic screening and checked against plagiarism. Readers may offer comments on the preprint. It was inspired by and intends to complement the arXiv repository, which mostly focuses on 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.

Contents

• Fields
• bioRxiv to Journals
• References

Prior to the establishment of bioRxiv, biological scientists were divided on the issue of having a dedicated preprint repository. 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.

Jocelyn Kaiser of Science said that in their first year, the repository had "attracted a modest but growing stream of papers", having hosted 824 preprints. As a result, several (but not all) biology journals have updated their policies on preprints. clarifying they do not consider preprints to be a 'prior publication' for purpose of the Ingelfinger rule. In 2015, over 20,000 tweets had been made about bioRxiv-hosted preprints. As of February 2016, the submission rate to bioRxiv had steadily increased from ~60 to ~200 per month, with a total of 3100 papers received. As of March 1st 2017, >8,650 papers have been accepted. In March 2017, the number of monthly submissions is now over 620.