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PLOS and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Enter Agreement to Enable Preprint Posting on bioRxiv

Editor’s Note: This press release also appears on the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Newsstand.

Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announce an agreement that enables the automatic posting of research articles submitted to PLOS journals on bioRxiv, CSHL’s preprint server for the life sciences. This collaboration between bioRxiv and PLOS empowers authors to share their work on a trusted platform before peer review, accelerating the pace of biomedical research.

PLOS is committed to enhancing the integrity of preprints and confidence in them as research outputs. PLOS will perform initial manuscript screening compatible with bioRxiv standards, covering scope, plagiarism, and previous publication, as well as other basic ethical and technical criteria. Articles will then post automatically to the bioRxiv server without the need for additional actions by the author. By allowing their submission to be posted on bioRxiv, authors accelerate the dissemination of their work and invite commentary by a broader community, which the PLOS editors will evaluate as part of peer review. Authors may choose to opt-out of this process when they submit papers to PLOS.

PLOS and CSHL also plan to work collaboratively towards solutions for preprint licensing that enable broad dissemination and reuse; the addition of badges to papers which signal that additional services for authors have been performed by PLOS and potentially other organizations; submission and screening standards in the biomedical sciences; and the implementation of new forms of manuscript assessment to augment or improve current methods of peer review.

“The opportunity to partner with a like-minded organization such as CSHL to realize a longstanding PLOS goal is a strategy for us moving forward,” said Alison Mudditt, Chief Executive Officer, PLOS. “A key part of our mission has always been to act as a catalyst, not only demonstrating the viability of new models through our own operations but also supporting them elsewhere. In the case of preprints, we can magnify our impact by partnering and helping shape how that future develops for all posted content on bioRxiv.”

The bioRxiv preprint server was initiated by CSHL in November 2013 and received major support in May 2017 from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It currently hosts over 20,000 manuscripts from bioscientists in 104 countries and has a rapidly rising rate of submission.

“Helping researchers communicate at the speed of science has been the principal goal of bioRxiv since its launch,” said John Inglis, co-founder of bioRxiv at CSHL, “and over one hundred thousand authors have taken advantage of that opportunity. We are delighted to have reached an agreement with PLOS to offer that benefit to tens of thousands more authors who are ready to share their work and open it up to the community response and feedback that bioRxiv makes possible.”

“This collaboration highlights PLOS’ commitment to the growing preprint movement in the biological sciences and bioRxiv’s support for scientists’ desire to share their research freely and widely,” said Louise Page, Chief Innovation Officer, PLOS. “The screened submissions to bioRxiv from PLOS illustrate how publishers can drive preprints and create new outputs in response to researcher-led initiatives that increase transparency and promote early dissemination of science.”

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