The landscape of scientific publishing is shifting as the leading servers for biomedical preprints, bioRxiv and medRxiv, announce their move to a newly formed independent nonprofit called openRxiv. Previously hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the transition aims to expand the global reach of preprint servers, improve their technological platforms, and encourage more researchers to share their findings before formal peer review.
Biomedical preprints—unreviewed scientific manuscripts posted publicly online—experienced massive growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the platforms currently host hundreds of thousands of papers, the transition to openRxiv highlights an ongoing push to make early research sharing the default. However, as the practice grows, the scientific community and the general public continue to wrestle with the benefits of rapid information sharing versus the risks of spreading unvetted data.
Expanding the Reach of openRxiv
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory launched bioRxiv in 2013 and medRxiv in 2019. The new independent nonprofit, openRxiv, will now oversee both platforms with support from principal funders, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and an anonymous donor. John Inglis, a co-founder of the sites, noted that the independent status will allow the organization to focus solely on its mission without being part of a larger academic institution.
The nonprofit plans to search for a full-time CEO to lead fundraising efforts and expand outreach. Currently, submissions disproportionately come from elite institutions such as Stanford University, Oxford, and Cambridge. OpenRxiv aims to broaden this pool by encouraging more submissions from researchers in the Global South. Despite a drop in COVID-19-specific papers, overall usage remains high, with bioRxiv seeing over 43,000 posts in 2024.
Career Impacts and Quality Concerns
While preprint servers speed up scientific communication, a recent survey of nearly 1,800 biomedical researchers in the United States and Canada revealed mixed feelings about their career impact. About half of the scientists surveyed agreed that preprints accelerate the spread of findings compared to the months-long peer-review process of traditional journals. Many also noted that posting early research helps them find collaborators.
Despite these benefits, researchers still face pressure from professional evaluators. More than 60% of survey respondents involved in hiring, tenure, and funding decisions said they give more credit to peer-reviewed journal articles than to preprints. Less than 12% said they credit both types of publications equally.
Fears of Misinformation and AI
Quality remains a significant concern for many scientists. Nearly half of the surveyed researchers worried that preprints could spread misinformation or shoddy research. Some researchers even expressed fears that artificial intelligence could be used to mass-generate fake studies, crowding out legitimate scientists who take the time to go through traditional peer review.
Do Readers Understand Preprints?
The rapid spread of preprinted research in the news has also highlighted a disconnect with the general public. Recent studies involving U.S. adults showed that many nonscientists do not understand how a preprint differs from a published journal article.
Overall, only about 30% of respondents correctly defined preprints as unvetted, preliminary, or uncertain. Surprisingly, providing readers with a clear definition of a preprint within a news article often did not improve their understanding. Furthermore, when news articles included strong language hedging the certainty of the findings, readers viewed the scientific claims as less credible.
Adding Peer Reviews to Preprints
To help address concerns about quality and public trust, bioRxiv has experimented with ways to make the evaluation process more transparent. An initiative called Transparent Review in Preprints allows authors to publicly post peer reviews alongside their manuscripts.
BioRxiv partnered with independent review services like Review Commons—run by EMBO Press and ASAPBio—to test this model. If authors opt in, readers can see the original manuscript, the critical comments from experts, and the author’s revisions. While some scientists may hesitate to share critical reviews publicly, advocates believe this system could ultimately save time and reduce the millions of hours spent annually on traditional journal reviews.
Currently, about 10,000 preprints across the platforms feature these posted reviews. As openRxiv takes the helm, these transparency experiments may help shape the future of how biomedical discoveries are evaluated and shared with the world.
