2026 is off to an exciting start, and we have a lot to share.
The new year has brought new milestones, new tools for researchers, and new opportunities to strengthen open science. In just the past few months, we've launched updates for our authors, welcomed new colleagues to the openRxiv team, and deepened our partnerships across the scientific community.
In this issue, you'll find an updated preprint from our team on bioRxiv, the upcoming launch of our Scientific, Medical, and Advisory Board framework, and a look back at everything we accomplished in 2025. We're also excited to share news about the events our team participated in and events happening across the ecosystem.
In our updated preprint on bioRxiv, we share the data from bioRxiv's first 13 years, and an analysis of the server's growth from a handful of monthly submissions in 2013 to more than 4,000 by late 2025, with the site now receiving around ten million views every month. We cover publication outcomes, how researchers use preprints to advance their careers, and what a 2023 survey of more than 7,000 users reveals about why biologists post and what they get in return. Nature reflected on these updates in their articleHow bioRxiv changed the way biologists share ideas — in numbers. >> Read More
If you missed our year-end recap, 2025 was a year worth revisiting. openRxiv launched as an independent nonprofit, named its first CEO, and logged its busiest year ever with more than 64,000 new preprints across bioRxiv and medRxiv. The review covers the "constellation" vision for the future of scientific communication, new partnerships linking preprints to data repositories and review services, a modernized DOI system, and the growing wave of funder mandates pushing research into the open. >> Read More
Richard Sever traces the origin story of bioRxiv and medRxiv from a late-night tweet in 2013 through the chaos of a global pandemic, offering a firsthand account of how two preprint servers became critical infrastructure for COVID-19 research and the broader open science movement. The piece reflects on community adoption, hard editorial decisions made in real time, and how the stress test of the pandemic ultimately paved the way for openRxiv as an independent nonprofit. >>Read More
Introducing the openRxiv Scientific, Medical, and Advisory Board Framework
We are excited to announce the upcoming launch of ourScientific, Medical, and Advisory Board framework. This board will bring together leading researchers, clinicians, and science policy experts to help advise on openRxiv's mission and ensure our platforms continue to serve the scientific community with rigor and integrity. >>Learn More
Preprint Pulse
Community and Events
Dryad x SORTEE Panel: The Present and Future of Research Data
openRxiv's Richard Sever joined Dryad, eLife, Morphobank, and the British Ecological Society for a February 2026 panel on where research data is headed and what that means for scholarly communications. >>Watch here
NISO Plus 2026: Diversification and Decentralization of Peer Review
openRxiv’s Sam Hindle joined a panel at NISO Plus exploring how open peer review, preprint servers, and post-publication commenting are reshaping scholarly conversation and what more diverse, decentralized review means for trust in science. >>Overview here
COS Webinar: TOP Guidelines Update
On April 1, the Center for Open Science walks through the updated Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines covering Research Practices, Verification Practices, and Verification Studies, and how TOP's tiered, modular structure applies across research communities and policy contexts. >>Register here
ICOR Public Meeting: Aligning Research Curation and Open Assessment
On April 7, the first ICOR public meeting of 2026 brings together leaders from ASAPBio, COAR, and Leiden University to examine how the Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) framework and open assessment infrastructure are reshaping the research lifecycle and how collective action is finally moving the needle. >>Register here
OLS Nebula: Open Science Training
OLS's (Open Life Science Limited) free, 6-week NASA-certified open science training program runs April 14 – May 21, 2026. >> Apply here
By the Numbers
bioRxiv by the numbers
The following figures are drawn from the newly updated bioRxiv preprint. Read the full paper for deeper analysis. >> Read the preprint
310,000+first submissions to bioRxiv since 2013
256 daysaverage (204 median) from bioRxiv preprint to journal publication
80%of bioRxiv preprints are ultimately published in a journal
7 million+abstract views per month; ~4 million PDF downloads per month
5,000+journals have published articles that first appeared on bioRxiv
209 countrieshave contributed bioRxiv preprints
0.17%withdrawal rate — lower than the ~0.2% retraction rate for journal articles
Help Us Spread the Word
Enjoy what you're reading? Share Re:Port with your network! Forward this newsletter to colleagues, post it on social media, or simply tell a fellow researcher about it over coffee. The more voices we have in this conversation about open science, the stronger our collective impact becomes. After all, the best discoveries happen when knowledge flows freely and that includes newsletters, too.
.png?upscale=true&width=472&upscale=true&name=openrxiv-logo%20(7).png)
