PLOS and CSHL enter agreement to enable preprint posting on bioRxiv

Collaboration empowers authors to share their work on a trusted platform before peer review, accelerating the pace of biomedical research

San Francisco, CA and Cold Spring Harbor, NY — The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announced today an agreement that enables the automatic posting of research articles submitted to PLOS journals on bioRxiv, CSHL’s preprint server for the life sciences.

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 like 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.”

“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 100,000 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.”

The bioRxiv preprint server was initiated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 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.

“This collaboration highlights PLOS’s 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.”

Contact

Dave Knutson
Sr. Communications Manager, PLOS
Cell: 651-260-8288
Email: dknutson@plos.org

Sara Roncero-Menendez
Communications Associate, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Phone: (516) 367-6866.
Email: roncero@cshl.edu

About Public Library of Science

PLOS (Public Library of Science) is a nonprofit Open Access publisher, innovator and advocacy organization dedicated to accelerating progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. The PLOS suite of journals contains rigorously peer-reviewed Open Access research articles from all areas of science and medicine, together with expert commentary and analysis. In addition to journals, the organization advances innovations in scientific communication through Channels, Collections, Communities and the PLOS Blog Network. www.plos.org