John Inglis, PhD Co-founder, bioRxiv and

Executive Director, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

inglis@cshl.edu Twitter @JohnRInglis

The bioRxiv preprint service

COASP 2016, Arlington VA, September 22, 2016

Preprint (n): a complete but unpublished manuscript yet to be certified by peer review

“Because the process [of peer review] can be lengthy, authors use the bioRxiv service to make their manuscripts available as preprints before peer review, allowing other scientists to see, discuss, and comment on the findings immediately”

•  Simple submission process •  Authors’ PDFs – no

typesetting/mark-up •  Posting almost immediate,

with screening but no peer review

•  Revised versions can be posted any time

•  Submission and access are free

Why did we start bioRxiv?

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY

Research at Cold Spring Harbor

•  600 scientific staff

•  50 research groups •  Molecular biology and genetics •  Cancer •  Neuroscience •  Plant biology •  Genomics and bioinformatics •  Quantitative biology

Science education & communication at Cold Spring Harbor

Conferences •  Meetings •  The Banbury Center •  Cold Spring Harbor Asia, Suzhou, China

Professional education •  Residential lab and lecture courses •  Watson School of Biological Sciences

Publishing •  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

Research journals

Review journals

Books

The mission of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

To create knowledge and

to share knowledge

“It’s ridiculous I have to wait months to read a paper while it goes through peer review…let me decide for myself whether it’s any good”

“Think how much time is wasted!”

What biologists were saying

“I am writing a grant but the paper is not going to be published by the time I submit. The solution is a preprint server that can be referenced”

arXiv: a million preprints in physics, math, comp sci, quant bio

•  Established 1991

•  Mechanism for sharing findings prior to publication & establishing priority

•  In 2012, number of biology submissions increased

Launched November 2013

For-profit start-up, conduit to PeerJ journal

For-profit, public peer-review journal

Commercial models

For-profit, host for figures, partial papers, etc.

Non-profit funded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory & Lourie Foundation

Non-profit funded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory & Lourie Foundation, hosted by HighWire Press

Non-profit, publisher-neutral models

Non-profit funded by Cornell, libraries & foundations, hosted by Cornell

Non-profit hosted by Open Science Framework

ChemRxiv Non-profit to be launched by American Chemical Society

Non-profit owned by SIPS, hosted by Open Science Framework

Benefits of preprints

•  Rapid transmission of results

•  Pre-publication feedback/discussion

•  Visibility, especially for early-career scientists

•  Evidence of productivity for grant/hiring committees

Accelerating communication

bioRxiv

Data courtesy of Stephen Royle

Received-published

Received-accepted

Accepted-published

bioRxiv screening

Author submits

ms

Affiliate screens

ms

Staff check

ms Manuscript Posted

Author proofs

ms

Rejected (not science, nonsense, health threat)

Author resubmits

ms

Staff check

ms

Author proofs

ms

versioning

Viewable by Affiliates Viewable by all

Affiliate flags paper for attention

Affiliate oks manuscript

bioRxiv features

•  Posted manuscript date-stamped + given a DOI (citable) •  Choice of article type (New, Confirmatory, or Contradictory Results)

•  26 subject categories

•  Choice of license (CC0, CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND, all rights reserved)

•  Article metrics and altmetrics

•  Commenting

•  Links to published versions

•  Indexed in Google Scholar

Posts

•  6000 posted manuscripts (>90% approved) •  30% revised (many more than once) •  26,000 authors •  2600 institutions •  42 countries

•  60% of manuscripts published, in >300 journals

Posts

bioRxiv by subject

arXiv by subject

Usage

Direct commenting

Email

Feedback/discussion

Blogs

Social media

?58K

Progress

•  Behavior change: more biologists posting/reading preprints

•  Policy change: more journals allow preprint posting •  Rule change: NIH biosketch can now cite non-peer-reviewed publications •  Change in community awareness

ASAPbio impact

ASAPbio survey

Change in journal policies

Changing citation policies

Changing indexing policies

Improving discovery

Improving discovery

Formal publication

Partnering with journals

Submission Peer review

Yur journal here

One-click submission Simultaneous

submission

Preprint posted

Formal publication

Further integration?

Submission Peer review

Yur journal here

Preprint posted

Commenting Social media

?

Conference integration

Automated feeds

Partnering with societies

Curated ‘channels’

Meeting ‘channels’

Journals Discussion

bioRxiv as a communication hub

Journals

Meetings Blogs

Confirmatory results

Contradictory results

Discussion

Re

pro

du

cib

ility

Ce

rtifica

tion

Next priorities

•  Expanding the available journal submission choices

•  Expanding ingestion of manuscripts from journals

•  Developing APIs for third party services

•  Expanding governance

•  Adding services for authors, eg Hypothes.is

•  Continuing advocacy for preprints with societies, funders, etc.

•  Consolidating future funding

Open issues

•  Priority claims and scooping

•  Clinical scope

•  Clinical criteria •  Citation linking/summing

•  Discoverability

•  Retractions

•  License conflicts

Grateful thanks to:

The bioRxiv Team Jan Argentine Linda Sussman Ted Roeder Richard Sever Inez Sialiano

The bioRxiv Affiliates and Advisors HighWire Press Partner Publishers Partner Submission Systems

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory The Lourie Foundation