openRxiv 2025 year in review

In March we launched openRxiv as an independent, researcher-led non-profit as the new organizational home for bioRxiv and medRxiv to continue advancing ‘communication at the speed of science’. This independence ensures that bioRxiv and medRxiv remain free to use and scientist led and gives us the opportunity to establish sustainable funding from diverse sources (starting with substantial support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative). It’s been an exciting year as we built the foundations of the organization (governance, operational infrastructure, partnerships) while maintaining our core commitment: rapid, free sharing of life and health sciences research. We’re so grateful to all the researchers, partners, collaborators and the broader scientific community who have been and continue to be a part of bioRxiv and medRxiv and the new openRxiv organization. We’re especially grateful and appreciative to Cold Spring Harbor Lab for its support in this transition.

Today, bioRxiv and medRxiv host more than 389,000 preprints by authors from thousands of institutions in more than 170 countries. This year, we had the most preprints yet, 49,256 new manuscripts on bioRxiv and 14,973 on medRxiv. That’s more than 6,000 new manuscripts each month! Preprints are being read and downloaded too, with more than 8 million page views and 6 million downloads each month. We maintain our rapid dissemination, with articles posted on bioRxiv or medRxiv typically within 48-72 hours of submission. About 80% of manuscripts are later published in formal peer-reviewed journals, an average of 250 days after being posted as preprints. We continue to see that articles posted first as preprints receive more citations. That 2025 has been the busiest year yet demonstrates the growing usage and impact of preprints.

In addition to lots and lots of preprints, we added a new team member, had the opportunity to connect with the community and collaborators and launched new initiatives. Here’s our year in review, and we’re excited to continue preprinting and building together in 2026!

New Leadership and Recognition

Tracy Teal Appointed CEO

In August, we added to our leadership, and Dr. Tracy K. Teal became our first CEO after serving as Interim COO since launch. Her career has been dedicated to building open, community-governed infrastructure. She co-founded Data Carpentry, led The Carpentries, and held leadership roles at Dryad and Posit (RStudio). Her mandate is clear: strengthen preprint infrastructure, deepen interoperability with the wider scholarly ecosystem, and build partnerships that increase the reach and impact of preprints globally.

Recognition for Preprint Founders

2025 brought significant recognition for the vision and work that created the preprint ecosystem.

Dr. Richard Sever, openRxiv Chief Science and Strategy Officer, was named to the Time 100 Most Influential People in Health, highlighting the global impact of making biomedical research rapidly and freely accessible.

We celebrated as bioRxiv and medRxiv co-founders Dr. Richard Sever and Dr. John Inglis, chair of the openRxiv Scientific Medical and Advisory Board, received The Royal Society’s 2025 Research Culture Award. The award recognizes the entire bioRxiv/medRxiv team and community for transforming scientific communication and fundamentally shifting norms toward more open, equitable access to research findings.

The Constellation Vision

At openRxiv Day in November, we gathered with around 80 scientists, technologists, funders, and partners to envision the future of scientific communication and how we can work together to explore opportunities and achieve these goals.

We introduced a “constellation” model for the article of the future. Instead of embedding everything in a standalone PDF, the article becomes one node connected to data repositories, reviews, replications, and trust signals across multiple organizations. The openRxiv dashboard already uses tools like Hypothes.is, Sciety, and SciScore to surface reviews and other signals alongside preprints.

This vision is taking shape through partnerships with PREreview, PCI, eLife, SolvingForScience, SciScore, Dryad, Curvenote, and others building review, verification, and data curation layers that connect directly to preprints.

Building Connections

Data sharing with Dryad
Our September partnership with Dryad lets bioRxiv authors deposit datasets directly without re-entering metadata. Datasets automatically link back to the preprint, and a verified dataset indicator shows that Dryad curators have checked the data. This integration serves as a template for connecting preprints to data repositories and other organizations that provide trust signals for research.

Modernized identifiers
From December 1, all new preprints use our own DOI prefix (10.64898) with date-encoded suffixes that make it easy to see when a preprint was posted. We maintain one DOI per preprint across all versions, with metadata that updates to reflect journal publication and other events, ensuring bidirectional links between preprints and the version published in a journal.

Expanded review options
We’re broadening the options authors have for review after posting a preprint. Community initiatives like PREreview train and empower early-career researchers and researchers from underrepresented regions to contribute to review. We’re also piloting options for authors to use AI-enabled tools like q.e.d., which analyzes manuscripts and provides structured feedback to authors within minutes. Importantly, a large majority of preprints on bioRxiv and medRxiv still go on to be published in peer-reviewed journals, showing that preprints accelerate dissemination rather than replace evaluation.

Aligning with Funders

Major philanthropic funders (the Gates Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Simons Foundation, and Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s) now require grantees to post manuscripts as preprints. These mandates provide a practical route to universal free access to research findings (sometimes called “Plan U“) while still allowing traditional journal publication.

We supported this momentum with our NIH response arguing that preprint mandates provide the most efficient way to ensure public access without diverting grant funds to high article-processing charges (APCs). Preprint servers post thousands of articles monthly at costs two orders of magnitude lower than journal APCs and without charging authors.

We also made it easier for authors to include funder information in submissions, improving transparency and compliance. 70% of authors now clearly acknowledge their funding sources by providing standardized Research Organization Registry (ROR) IDs.

Staying Connected

We launched the openRxiv newsletter this year to keep the community informed about developments in preprints, open science, and the evolving scholarly ecosystem. The newsletter shares updates on new features, partnerships, policy changes, and opportunities to shape the future of scientific communication.

Sign up at openrxiv.org/newsletter to receive regular updates and stay engaged with the community building the next generation of open science infrastructure.

2025 was about establishing openRxiv as a long-term, independent steward committed to open science values. We strengthened leadership, deepened connections to data repositories and review tools, added funcationality, and aligned with evolving funder expectations.

Looking forward, we’re building toward a vision in which preprints lie at the center of a connected, trustworthy ecosystem of research objects, with openRxiv serving as a values-led hub rather than a gatekeeper. If you’re part of that ecosystem (as an author, reader, reviewer, tool builder, funder, or institutional representative), we hope this year-in-review reflects the work you’ve helped make possible.

Stay engaged in 2026 by posting and reading preprints, contributing to discussions about review and verification, and helping us design the constellation of tools and connections that will define the next decade of open science. 💚