Product Overview: medRxiv
Introduction
medRxiv is a free online preprint server dedicated to hosting complete but unpublished manuscripts in the fields of medical, clinical, and public health sciences. Founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Yale University, and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), medRxiv aims to enhance the openness, accessibility, and speed of scientific knowledge dissemination.
Key Features
Content Scope
medRxiv is designed to distribute preprints that describe human health research, including:
- Original research articles
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses with reproducible methodology
- Clinical trial results and other prospective interventional studies
- Complete health-related research articles with step-by-step protocols
- Clinical research design protocols
- Cost-effectiveness analyses
- Full computational/mathematical research papers modeling disease prevalence and transmission
Submission and Screening
While medRxiv preprints are not formally peer-reviewed, they undergo a screening process to ensure they meet certain criteria:
- Compliance with ethical standards
- Inclusion of complete author declarations, conflict of interest statements, ethical approvals, funding disclosures, and patient consent declarations
- Registration numbers and IDs for clinical trials from internationally recognized registries
- Approval from appropriate ethics oversight bodies
Accessibility and Search Functionality
medRxiv provides a platform for researchers to share, comment, and receive feedback on their work. However, the native search functionality on the website has limitations, particularly for systematic reviews. To address this, tools like the medrxivr R package have been developed to enable more complex and systematic searches of medRxiv and bioRxiv preprint metadata.
Direct Transfer to Journals
medRxiv offers a feature called “Direct Transfer from medRxiv to Journals (M2J)” which allows authors to transmit their manuscript files and metadata directly to participating journals, streamlining the submission process.
Community Engagement
medRxiv fosters collaboration among researchers by providing a platform for immediate sharing and discussion of findings. This facilitates proactive sharing, improves the documentation of ideas, and enhances community feedback and support.
Functionality
Posting and Indexing
Authors can submit their manuscripts to medRxiv prior to or concurrently with journal submission. Once posted, articles receive a digital object identifier (DOI) and cannot be removed. They can be searched, indexed, and cited by the broader scientific community.
Subject Categorization
Authors can assign their preprints to one of approximately 50 subject categories, which helps in categorizing article feeds and Twitter posts, ensuring convenience for readers.
Compliance and Ethics
medRxiv ensures that all posted manuscripts comply with ethical standards and include necessary approvals and registrations. For example, clinical trials must have a trial ID from an ICMJE-recognized registry and approval from an ethics oversight body.
Usage Guidelines
It is important to note that medRxiv preprints are preliminary reports that have not been certified by peer review. Therefore, they should not be relied upon to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior, and should not be reported in news media as established information.
In summary, medRxiv serves as a critical platform for the rapid dissemination of medical and health sciences research, promoting openness, collaboration, and the swift sharing of scientific findings.