Richard Sever
In those days, medRxiv and bioRxiv, a biology research preprint server Sever co-founded in 2013, hosted 25% of all COVID-19 research. To date, bioRxiv and medRxiv have published more preprints than any other biology server.
'We saw these bizarre scenarios where a paper would come out about a new variant of COVID on bioRxiv and medRxiv and you knew how important it was in real time,' says Sever. Had that paper appeared in a journal several months later after peer review, he noted, the findings would no longer have been relevant. One trial that found dexamethasone effective for treating severe COVID went on medRxiv for many weeks before it was in a journal. 'The day it went up, you could see the data, people could read it, physicians around the world could put that into practice,' Sever says.
The chaos during COVID-19 proved the importance of sites like medRxiv and bioRxiv in communicating research in an increasingly digital world, and challenged a decades-old publishing and peer review process to modernize. In 2024, the two preprint platforms, which had been embedded within the infrastructure of the well-respected Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since their inception, announced that they would be breaking out to stand on their own, overseen by an independent non-profit organization, openRxiv. Sever serves as openRxiv's chief science and strategy officer, and works to make the platform an accessible and open place for researchers of all backgrounds to share good science.
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