Richard Sever
@richardsever
Chief Science and Strategy Officer, openRxiv. Co-Founder, bioRxiv and medRxiv.
I ❤️ NY Subway Graphics Standard Manual - on view at 5th Ave/53rd St stop
Last month was another record for bioRxiv submissions. The pandemic surge and lag now clearly in the past and the growth continues. Thanks as ever to all the authors, readers affiliates, funders and amazing internal openRxiv team who make this happen!
"public trust in science and scientists is high...The idea that there’s a pervasive lack of trust is completely unfounded...But trust has dropped in certain groups...politically right-leaning groups" Maybe it's not science/scientists that's to blame... 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The extent of the IF obsession is evident from any and every Google search for a journal - even venues that don't warrant one. This literally makes or breaks journals - non-profits are hit particularly hard - and it stifles innovation and distorts science. 2/2
Great to see @doudna-lab.bsky.social and so many other speakers at #cshsymposium2026 using bioRxiv QR codes in their talks! Reminder that every paper gets one bsky.app/profile/bior...
Fabulous three days at @uwgenome.bsky.social & @fredhutch.org . Thanks to my hosts @jshendure.bsky.social @harmitmalik.bsky.social @drewoberst.bsky.social @merz.bsky.social @maitreya.bsky.social et al. for a great time and many thought-provoking conversations with faculty and trainees
This is essentially the basis for our vision of "the article of the future" as a constellation of linked web elements. The data cannot be contained in the paper but a representation is shown. Ideally this is linked to auditable data in a repository 2/n journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Materials assembled for virtual summit with @pracheeac.bsky.social
The space has been characterized by a lot of magical thinking, hopes that business model churn will somehow yield an efficient an unforeseen, equitable market solution and shock when unintended but predictable consequences manifest. Meanwhile... 2/2
Of course the biggest revelation was that mathematicians have blackboards in bathrooms 4/n
Preprint servers are more complex than people think. arXIv chief Ramin Zabih shows their workflow at the Newton Institute. 1/n
If we're going to solve this we need to have an honest and informed conversation about the true costs of doing things 2/2 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
That ‘constellation’ model in which repos and servers collaborate to support the aspects of the ecosystem they do best is articulated here. One thing that is needed is better mapping of the graph, discovery. 3/n openrxiv.org/openrxiv-day/
Word is still what the vast majority of authors write papers with. A reminder for those of us hoping for new authoring tools that we must meet people where they are. 5/n
What about feedback/comments? Authors clearly want and are getting feedback on articles, but it’s mostly private, via email. Cultural change is needed for this to move to the public comment section, and it will always be distributed (social media, etc.) 4/n
So when do authors preprint? Many do long before they submit to a journal (to get feedback to improve the work?); many submit around the same time (just want the work out?). Only a minority are submitting once the paper is under review [evidence against claims by some detractors]. 3/n
bioRxiv continues to grow – a brief spike and lag in the pandemic (details of which are included) but a steady increase in submissions since then. % revisions, license choice, etc. all fairly constant. 0.1% withdrawal rate is comparable to journal retraction rates 2/n