During the COVID-19 pandemic, bioRxiv experienced a less dramatic increase in submissions and readership compared to medRxiv. A potential reason for this difference is that bioRxiv has a broader base than medRxiv. For bioRxiv, the popular disciplines for submissions are genomics, cell biology, and neuroscience.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on bioRxiv Submissions and Readership

Northwestern University

Preprint services by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

medRxiv

Both bioRxiv and and medRxiv has links on their homepages to a page, "COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 preprints collected both from  medRxiv and bioRxiv".  

Service changes made by Cold Spring Harbor since COVID-19 pandemic 

Re: medRxiv, a preprint server.
1.  medRxiv debuted arXiv due to the much later publication cycle for biomedical-related subjects. 
	- Biomedical science: Approximately 1 year
    - Other disciplines (e.g.) Business, Economics: Approximately 2 years
    
 2.  Potential reasons for the shorter publication cycle due to the nature of biomedical science: 
 - The discipline often associated with a matter of life and death. 
 - Publishing in prestigious journals outweighed the advantage of releasing papers earlier.  
    
3. The changes in the number of papers posted in medRxiv by month:
                 	         - June 2019: 32
                  - February 2020: 584
                  - March 2020: 1,100
                  - April 2020: 2,000
                
4. The page view increased to 15 million a month from 1 million a month before the pandemic.


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