(Note: an additional FAQ relating to more in-depth submission processes can be found here)
What is an unrefereed preprint?
Before formal publication in a scholarly journal, scientific and medical articles are traditionally certified by “peer review.” In this process, the journal’s editors take advice from various experts—called “referees”—who have assessed the paper and may identify weaknesses in its assumptions, methods, and conclusions. Typically, a journal will only publish an article once the editors are satisfied that the authors have addressed referees’ concerns and that the data presented support the conclusions drawn in the paper.
Because this process can be lengthy, authors use the bioRxiv service to make their manuscripts available as “preprints” before certification by peer review, allowing other scientists to see, discuss, and comment on the findings immediately. Readers should therefore be aware that articles on bioRxiv have not been finalized by authors, might contain errors, and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community.
We also urge journalists and other individuals who report on medical research to the general public to consider this when discussing work that appears on bioRxiv preprints and emphasize it has yet to be evaluated by the medical community and the information presented may be erroneous.
Some journals and independent peer review services make peer reviews publicly available before a paper appears in a journal. In these instances, the peer reviews can be accessed via the bioRxiv dashboard.
Are bioRxiv preprints peer-reviewed?
Manuscripts submitted to bioRxiv are not certified by scientific peer review, edited, or typeset before being posted online. This means they may contain errors and/or omissions. Some manuscripts might be undergoing peer review, and the journals or other organizations who are responsible for this process, have the opportunity to post peer reviews alongside preprints in the article dashboard (see above).
Who is responsible for the content posted on bioRxiv?
Authors are solely responsible for the content posted on bioRxiv. All submissions are screened for appropriateness (see below).
Are submissions to bioRxiv scrutinized before posting?
All articles are screened on submission for plagiarism, non-scientific content, inappropriate article types, and material that could potentially endanger the health of individual patients or the public. The latter may include, but is not limited to, studies describing dual-use research of concern and works that challenge or could compromise accepted public health measures and advice regarding infectious disease transmission, immunization, and therapy.
Is there a charge for submitting manuscripts to bioRxiv?
There is no fee to submit articles to bioRxiv.
How long does it take for a preprint to appear on bioRxiv?
Preprints usually appear on bioRxiv within 48 hours; however, screening may take longer over a weekend or holiday, or if there are issues with the content that need addressing or extra scrutiny.
What is the Impact Factor of bioRxiv?
bioRxiv is not a journal so it has no Impact Factor.
Can I submit a manuscript to bioRxiv that I have submitted to a journal?
A manuscript can be submitted to bioRxiv at any time up to the point it is accepted by a journal. If a manuscript has been published by a journal, it cannot be submitted to bioRxiv.
Can I submit my article to a journal directly from bioRxiv?
Yes, you can directly submit from bioRxiv to an increasing number of journals. Once you have completed a preprint submission/revision, the option "Submit bioRxiv Preprint to a Journal or Peer Review Service" will be available in your Author Area, with a list of available destinations. The current list of destinations can also be found on bioRxiv's About page and Submit page.
Which journals allow posting of preprints prior to submission?
Most basic research journals will consider manuscripts that were posted on bioRxiv and other preprint servers prior to submission. Lists of journal policies can be found on Wikipedia, and SHERPA/RoMEO. Authors should consult these lists, individual journal websites, and other sources of information before submitting to bioRxiv and if in doubt, contact the journal to which they ultimately intend to submit.
A growing number of journals (249 and counting) are integrated with bioRxiv either by accepting direct submission of preprints (bioRxiv-to-journal, B2J) or by facilitating co-submission of manuscripts to bioRxiv (journal-to-bioRxiv, J2B).
What types of content can be posted on bioRxiv?
bioRxiv is for the distribution of preprints, which are complete but unpublished manuscripts. Research articles reporting new, confirmatory, or contradictory findings may be posted.
bioRxiv is NOT intended for:- Case reports/series
- Work not premised on modern biology/physiology
- Clinical veterinary medicine studies
- Narrative reviews (see below)
- Editorials, letters, opinion pieces
- Announcements of tools or services without data
- Product advertisements
- Addenda
- Hypotheses without new data
- Laboratory protocols/recipes
- Meeting reports
- White papers or policy statements
- Guidelines
- Theses/undergraduate dissertations, term papers, textbook excerpts
- Teaching/instructive materials
- Individual components of research articles, such as figures, tables, and datasets
What are subject categories?
bioRxiv posts preprints of articles covering all aspects of research in the biological sciences. When posting an article, the author assigns it to one of ~25 subject categories. Subject categories are used primarily for categorization of article feeds, Twitter posts, etc. This is not a formal ontology and papers may appear in one subject category but would be equally appropriate to another.
Can I choose more than one subject category for my preprint?
Only one subject area can be selected for a preprint on bioRxiv. This maximizes convenience for readers by ensuring article feeds are not redundant.
Can I post a review article on bioRxiv?
No. bioRxiv is intended for rapid sharing of new research, defined as experimental, mathematical, or computational work. Systematic reviews that include reproducible methodology (we recommend using PRISMA guidelines) and meta-analyses that include new analyses of existing data may be appropriate. Narrative reviews, viewpoints and essays that primarily summarize existing knowledge are not appropriate. Neither are hypothesis articles, guidelines, policy statements, theses/undergraduate dissertations, term papers and textbook excerpts.
Can I post methods or protocols on bioRxiv?
Complete biological research articles summarizing new experimental or computational methods and tools are appropriate and may include step-by-step protocols. Tool announcements and step-by-step protocols alone are not sufficient and must be placed in the context of a complete research article that includes elements such as Introduction, Results, and Discussion.
Can I post a clinical paper on bioRxiv?
Clinical papers should now be submitted to medRxiv (submit.medrxiv.org) rather than bioRxiv. In June 2019, bioRxiv successfully completed a restricted preprint pilot for clinical research, leading to the launch of medRxiv as a dedicated preprint server covering all health science research. The bioRxiv subject categories Clinical Trials and Epidemiology are now closed to new submissions, but revisions to papers already on bioRxiv will be accepted. Papers that report results of Clinical Trials must now be submitted to medRxiv. Most Epidemiology papers should also be submitted to medRxiv, but if a paper contains no health-related information, authors may choose to submit it to another bioRxiv subject category (e.g., Genetics or Microbiology).
Can I post a bioinformatics/computational paper on bioRxiv?
bioRxiv welcomes computational papers. These should be full research papers and include methodological details and results. Simple sequence alignments and results of facile database searches are generally not sufficient, nor are software announcements that do not include detailed methods and research data produced by their output/application.
My preprint includes nucleotide sequence database accession numbers—when will the sequences be released to the public?
Databases that are members of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Consortium (DDBJ, ENA, and GenBank/SRA) release sequences once a manuscript posts on a preprint server. For other databases, authors should check the policy of the database concerned.
Can I include images of individuals in my preprint?
No. bioRxiv does not post articles that include images or information that could identify an individual. As a preprint server, we cannot verify whether appropriate consent has been obtained. To protect participant confidentiality, we will decline manuscripts containing images that may identify an individual. Therefore, we request that authors remove all figure elements containing photographs in which an individual's face or other identifying features are present prior to submission. Please note obscuring, blurring, covering, or pixelation of the faces is not sufficient for posting on bioRxiv.
Can I post a response on bioRxiv to another preprint or an article published in a journal?
bioRxiv is intended for the rapid sharing of new research and not for commentary that simply contests or rebuts research published in journals. However, articles that augment or challenge earlier work with bona fide new data and/or complete re-analyses of published data sets may be deemed appropriate for the Contradictory Results section of bioRxiv.
Can I post a manuscript that is not in English?
Articles must be submitted in English as we are only able to screen for inappropriate or dangerous content in English. If you wish to make material in another language available, you should advise readers to contact the corresponding author to request it or provide a link to data elsewhere.
Who holds copyright for bioRxiv preprints and what licensing options are supported?
Authors retain copyright of their manuscripts and can choose from a number of distribution/reuse options, including:
- No reuse/adaptation without permission (Anyone who wishes to share, reuse, remix, or adapt this material must obtain permission from the corresponding author.)
- CC-BY-NC-ND (Anyone can share this material, provided it remains unaltered in any way, this is not done for commercial purposes, and the original authors and source are credited and cited. Anyone who wishes to remix/adapt the work or reuse it for commercial purposes must first obtain permission from the corresponding author.)
- CC-BY-ND (Anyone can share this material, providing it remains unaltered in any way and the original authors and source are credited and cited. Anyone who wishes to remix/adapt the work must first obtain permission from the corresponding author.)
- CC-BY-NC (Anyone can share, reuse, remix, or adapt this material, providing this is not done for commercial purposes and the original authors and source are credited and cited. Anyone who wishes to reuse the work for commercial purposes must first obtain permission from the corresponding author.)
- CC-BY (Anyone can share, reuse, remix, or adapt this material for any purpose, providing the original authors and source are credited and cited.)
- CC0 (The paper is placed in the public domain and no longer restricted by copyright. Anyone can legally share, reuse, mix, or adapt this material for any purpose without crediting the original authors or source.)
The licensing terms selected by the author determine the parameters for reuse. The copyright holder and licensing information for each manuscript are displayed beneath the Abstract and on the Info/History tab on the preprint page.
How should I acknowledge the use of generative AI for writing my preprint?
Authors are responsible for the content they submit, including material produced by generative AI and related technologies. As with other computational methodologies, use of these tools should be detailed in manuscripts, and the output must not plagiarize other work or breach copyright. In any case, authors are accountable for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of their work. AI tools and large language models (LLMs) do not meet this requirement and should not be listed as authors on articles.
Can I submit a manuscript to bioRxiv and another preprint server?
We strongly recommend that a preprint be posted on only one server. bioRxiv provides metrics for article views, PDF downloads, and attention scores. Authors will find these metrics are underestimated in article-to-article comparisons if a manuscript appears on more than one server. In addition, readers may be frustrated by encountering the same preprint in more than one location. Posting to both bioRxiv and medRxiv is not permitted and will result in article withdrawal. Manuscripts already present on other preprint servers will not be posted.
What file formats are acceptable when submitting my manuscript?
Authors may submit either a single PDF file to bioRxiv or individual text and figure files, which then undergo automated PDF conversion. Text files should be submitted as Word, WordPerfect, or PDF files. Authors must convert TeX files (including LaTeX) to PDF prior to submission. If images and tables are submitted as separate files, acceptable file formats are GIF, TIFF, EPS, and JPEG, as well as most common word-processing formats for tables. Supplemental files are posted “as is” and can be submitted in a wide range of file formats.
In what formats are bioRxiv preprints available?
Papers on bioRxiv are first posted as PDF files derived from the original author’s manuscript. The files are also converted to full text HTML and XML, a process that can take up to 48 hours, which means the full text HTML typically will post 1-2 days after the PDF has posted. XML is available for text mining purposes. Each version of a manuscript is available in PDF, HTML, and XML formats. Supplemental files are available in the format submitted by the authors.
Why have some details changed in the Abstract or other metadata?
Metadata details (manuscript title, author list, abstract, etc.) are supplied by the author during the submission process and initially post with the PDF. These are replaced with final metadata extracted from each PDF file once the full text HTML is generated. There may be small differences between the metadata the authors supply and the corresponding text derived from their PDF files.
I see full text HTML for some papers but not others. Why?
Manuscripts are posted in PDF form as soon as they are accepted and simultaneously sent for XML conversion. The full text HTML for recently posted manuscripts typically appears within 2 days after the PDF posts.
What are the different options for printing and downloading bioRxiv preprints?
PDF files on bioRxiv are created by the authors. Since these vary considerably in layout, bioRxiv also generates a full text version with in-line figures that readers can print directly or save as PDF if they prefer this to the author’s original file. We also provide an XML version, which may work with dedicated viewers but is typically used for text mining. Note that the tagged full text versions are typically generated 24-48 hours after the PDF first posts (the links are grayed out before these become available).
Can I revise my preprint?
The revision process is intended for substantially updating the content of the manuscript, e.g., new datasets used, reanalyses, expanded discussion or supplemental information. If errors are entered in the Title, Author names, Author affiliations or Abstract fields in the submission system but are correct in the PDF, they will only appear on the site for approximately 48 hours before they are replaced with final metadata extracted from the PDF file. Therefore, authors should refrain from submitting revisions to fix those issues exclusively.
Otherwise, a manuscript posted on bioRxiv can be revised at any time until it is accepted for publication in a journal. Note, however, that some journals request that authors do not post versions that include changes made in response to the journal's peer review process.
How do I submit a revised version of my preprint?
To submit a revised version of your preprint, select “Submit a revision” within the Author area, find your submission ID# and click on the link “Submit a revised manuscript”. The revision will be posted under the same DOI and the original version of the manuscript will remain accessible in the Info/History tab on the article page. If the content of the manuscript has changed sufficiently for you to consider it a different article, you should submit it as a new manuscript, not a revision, and it will be assigned a new DOI.
If you wish to revise a paper that was submitted to bioRxiv indirectly via a journal’s submission process (journal-to-biorxiv, J2B), you must do so by using the bioRxiv submission system. First, the corresponding author must ensure they are registered at bioRxiv by clicking ‘create a new account’ at https://submit.biorxiv.org and providing the same email address entered during journal submission. The corresponding author will then be able to complete their account registration and log into their Author Area on bioRxiv to submit revisions.
I have changes to my Supplemental files but not to my previously posted bioRxiv preprint. Do I need to submit a new version of my manuscript when I submit revised Supplemental files?
The bioRxiv article must accompany revised Supplemental files, even if no changes are made to the article file itself.
Can I remove a manuscript that has been posted on bioRxiv?
No. Manuscripts posted on bioRxiv receive DOI's and thus are citable and part of the scientific record. They are indexed by services such as Google Scholar and Crossref, creating a permanent digital presence independent of bioRxiv records. Consequently, bioRxiv’s policy is that papers cannot be removed. Authors may withdraw their article if they no longer stand by their findings/conclusions or discover fundamental errors in the article. In these cases, a statement explaining the reason for the withdrawal is posted on the bioRxiv article page to which the DOI defaults; the original manuscript is still accessible via the Info/History tab on bioRxiv and a "Withdrawn" watermark is added to the PDF of all posted versions of the main text of the manuscript. To initiate the withdrawal process, navigate to the "Submit a Revision" section of your Author Area, find your submission ID# and click on the “Submit a Withdrawal Statement” link to proceed.
In extremely rare cases, papers have been removed because of legal or safety reasons.
Where are bioRxiv preprints indexed?
bioRxiv preprints are indexed by Google, all other search engines, Google Scholar, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, Europe PubMed Central, and Preprint Citation Index (connected to the Web of Science). Preprints of NIH-funded studies are also indexed by PubMed.
Will bioRxiv content remain permanently accessible and usable in the future?
Yes, all bioRxiv papers are archived at Portico.
How do I cite bioRxiv preprints?
Preprints deposited in bioRxiv should be cited using their digital object identifier (DOI).
Example: Author AN, Author BT. 2013. My article title. bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2019.12.11.123456
If there are multiple versions of the preprint and you wish to cite a specific version, you can do so by adding the version-specific URL.
Example: doi: 10.1101/2019.12.11.123456 version 2, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.11.123456v2
Can I cite bioRxiv preprints in my NIH application?
Yes. From Reporting Preprints and Other Interim Research Products: “The NIH encourages investigators to use interim research products, such as preprints, to speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor of their work.”
My preprint has now been published in a journal. What happens next?
Nothing further from authors is usually required. All preprint versions will remain on the site and bioRxiv will usually automatically add a link to the published version within approximately two (2) weeks of journal publication. The corresponding author should receive an email from bioRxiv requesting confirmation of the link.
On rare occasions a match is not made for technical reasons. If the link does not appear, please wait 2-3 weeks before contacting bioRxiv staff (biorxiv@cshl.edu) or leave a comment in the comment section for your preprint. We will verify all such requests before linking preprints to the published article.
What are Channels and how can I request a Channel?
Channels are curated collections of preprints that share the subject area focus of a particular organization (e.g., the 4D Nucleome Program). They are accessible from the Channels tab at bioRxiv.org. If your organization is interested in maintaining a Channel, please contact biorxiv@cshl.edu. bioRxiv does not curate the collections algorithmically: a curator will be needed from your organization to manually tag appropriate papers after they have posted on bioRxiv.
How do I subscribe to one or more Subject Area Alerts from bioRxiv?
You can add or remove Subject Area Alerts at any time by checking or unchecking subject categories from the Sign Up for Subject Area Alerts page.
Does bioRxiv provide metrics for preprints?
Metrics can be found on each preprint's Metrics tab. Article usage based on Abstract and PDF views is updated daily. In addition, altmetrics are provided that track attention to the article in blogs, tweets, news reports, and other media.
Can I comment on a preprint on bioRxiv?
You can comment on each version of a preprint by using Disqus. Disqus can be accessed by clicking on the first icon in the launch bar located just below the title and author list of each version of a preprint. Comments should address the scientific content of the article and may include feedback and/or specific questions about a preprint's methodology, results, or data. Preprint reviews can be submitted as comments, but the journal, reviewer, and editor names must not be included. Comments must be in English and submitted only once. They are moderated, which takes 24-48h. Any comments that are not directly related to the content of the preprint (e.g., personal stories), violate our policy, are offensive, or question the character, abilities, or motivation of authors will be excluded. bioRxiv cannot correspond with commenters. See this post for more information on commenting on bioRxiv.
Does bioRxiv provide bulk access to full text and metadata or an API?
bioRxiv provides free and unrestricted access to all articles posted on the server. We believe this should apply not only to human readers but also to machine analysis of the content. A growing variety of resources, including APIs and feeds, have been created to facilitate this.
How does bioRxiv address concerns about posting manuscripts that are not certified by peer review?
Submissions to bioRxiv undergo a multi-step screening process to identify content that is non-scientific or could endanger the public. All preprints posted to bioRxiv are accompanied by a prominent statement that the content has not been certified by peer review. PDFs also receive a stamp indicating this. See this post for more information about the screening process at bioRxiv.
Who runs bioRxiv?
bioRxiv is a non-profit service financially supported by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The server is owned and operated by CSHL.