BioRxiv Overview
BioRxiv is an online archive and distribution service dedicated to hosting preprints in the life sciences, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution.
What BioRxiv Does
BioRxiv serves as a platform for researchers to share their unpublished work in the biological sciences, facilitating early dissemination of scientific findings and fostering community feedback. The service allows authors to deposit manuscripts in draft or final form, provided the content is unpublished and all authors have consented to its deposition.
Key Features and Functionality
Subject Categories and Submission
- BioRxiv categorizes preprints into approximately 25 subject categories, which help in organizing article feeds, Twitter posts, and other content alerts. However, authors can only select one subject category for their preprint to avoid redundancy.
Screening Process
- While BioRxiv does not perform peer review, it implements a basic screening process to filter out non-scientific, pseudoscientific, or inappropriate content. This ensures that the posted material is relevant and does not pose health or biosecurity risks.
Manuscript Handling and Versioning
- Authors can upload their manuscripts as PDF files or a combination of Microsoft Word and figure files, which are automatically converted into a single PDF. Each preprint is assigned a unique digital object identifier (DOI), and each version of the preprint receives a unique URL. This allows for the citation of specific versions of the preprint.
Integration and Transfer
- BioRxiv offers streamlined processes for transferring manuscripts between the preprint server and journal submission systems through its BioRxiv-to-journal (B2J) and journal-to-BioRxiv (J2B) streams. This reduces the burden on authors by allowing them to upload files and enter metadata only once.
Accessibility and Summarization
- To enhance accessibility, BioRxiv has introduced a pilot project using large language models (LLMs) to generate AI-driven summaries for each preprint. These summaries are tailored for different audiences: those with little or no scientific training, scientists with expertise in different fields, and experts in the same field as the authors. Authors can also edit or delete these summaries if needed.
Search and Alert Features
- The platform is equipped with robust search and alert features, including Solr-powered search, personalized email alerts, subject-category-specific RSS feeds, and Twitter accounts. BioRxiv is also indexed by various third-party discovery tools, such as Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and Europe PubMed Central.
Additional Tools and Services
- BioRxiv integrates with third-party commenting and annotation tools like Disqus and Hypothesis. It also provides the ability to upload supplemental files, such as movies, figures, and tables. The content is archived with Portico to ensure long-term preservation.
Clinical and Epidemiology Research
- Following the launch of medRxiv, a dedicated preprint server for clinical research, BioRxiv no longer accepts new submissions in the Clinical Trials and Epidemiology categories. However, revisions to existing papers in these categories are still accepted.
BioRxiv’s comprehensive features and functionalities make it a valuable resource for the scientific community, facilitating the rapid dissemination of research findings and promoting early feedback and collaboration.