openRxiv has officially launched as an independent nonprofit to oversee bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world’s leading preprint servers for life and health sciences.
According to certain reports, openRxiv arrives on the scene bearing an ability to ensure that researchers across the globe can continue to share discoveries rapidly and openly. More on that would reveal how, by leveraging a researcher-led governance model, openRxiv should be able to strengthen the foundation of preprint sharing, all for the purpose of empowering scientists to communicate findings at the speed of discovery.
“We want openRxiv to be a home for all scientists—whether they’re early-career researchers, established scholars, or from institutions large and small worldwide,” said Dr. John Inglis, Chair of the openRxiv Scientific and Medical Advisory Board and Co-Founder at bioRxiv and medRxiv. “By keeping preprint sharing independent, open, and researcher-led, we can foster even greater collaboration and innovation across the sciences.”
Talk about benefits that incentivized the creation of openRxiv as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, they begin from the promise to deliver long term sustainability. This translates to how openRxiv dedicates all resources to maintaining and improving preprint sharing, without competing institutional goals or financial pressures typical of commercial management.
Next up, there is flexibility for the future. Basically, as an independent organization, openRxiv can effectively refine processes and respond directly to the scientific community’s needs. This treads upon a long distance to help preprint servers remain relevant, useful, and globally accessible.
Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the potential for broad community oversight. The stated oversight will be conducted by a governance group made up with researchers, funders, and technical experts, who all come together to ensure that organizational decisions reflect the priorities of scientific community as a whole rather than a single institution or organization.
“Preprints have proven indispensable for accelerating discovery, particularly in urgent scientific and public health contexts,” said Dr. Richard Sever, Chief Science and Strategy Officer at openRxiv and Co-Founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv. “By establishing openRxiv as an independent nonprofit, we are securing the future of bioRxiv and medRxiv as trusted, researcher-led platforms that will continue to serve the global scientific community.”
Among other things, we ought to mention that, since their launches in 2013 and 2019, respectively, preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv have gone on to change the entire look of how scientific findings are communicated. You see, these serves have hosted more than 325,000 reports of new discoveries thus far, making it possible for scientists worldwide to collaborate, iterate, and build upon each other’s work at an unprecedented pace.
To understand the significance of such a development, one must take into account the fact that researchers of today rely, quite extensively, upon health and research efforts, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where rapid scientific dissemination is absolutely critical. The same is contextualized well by how more than 11 million readers, at the moment, explore manuscripts that have been submitted by tens of thousands of scientists from more than 140 countries.
“Open science is essential to accelerating discoveries and advancing the study of human health and disease,” said Stephen Quake, Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. “With the launch of openRxiv, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is helping ensure that scientists worldwide have the infrastructure needed to share and build upon groundbreaking research freely and openly. CZI has been a longtime supporter of preprint servers, and I am excited for this next phase of progress in scientific communication.”
