BioRxiv

bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. It was hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) until March 11, 2025, when ownership transferred to the newly formed non-profit openRxiv, dedicated to bioRxiv and medRxiv. As preprints, papers hosted on bioRxiv are not peer-reviewed (though submissions may be undergoing peer review and peer reviews from other sources may be posted alongside preprints). However, all submissions undergo a basic scrutinization process, which includes safeguarding checks, an automated plagiarism screening and an assessment of appropriateness. Moreover, readers may post comments. The latest study indicates that the content of bioRxiv preprints rarely changes after submission to journals and subsequent peer review (in the case of accepted papers); however, the automatic process of linking preprints with their published versions might lead to the omission of a substantial number of cases. It has been measured that two-thirds of the papers posted in bioRxiv are later published in peer-reviewed journals. BioRxiv, and its sister site, medRxiv, have been major sources for the dissemination of COVID-19 research. 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.