What bioRxiv’s first 30,000 preprints reveal about biologists

Researchers posted more preprints to the bioRxiv server in 2018 alone than in the four previous years, according to an analysis of the 37,648 preprints posted on the site in its first 5 years. The researchers who led the analysis have launched an interactive database of all the bioRxiv preprints, which is openly available on a new site called Rxivist. The total number of bioRxiv preprint authors rose from 4,012 to 106,231 over the same period (see ‘March of the preprint’). Two-thirds of the preprints posted on bioRxiv in or before 2016 were later published in peer-reviewed journals, most within six months of their initial posting to the site. Preprint websites also help researchers to communicate ideas that might not be picked up by peer-reviewed journals, says Marina Picciotto, a neuroscientist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, one of the top 20 journals in terms of the number of preprints published.

Source: www.nature.com