Lately, I have spent a considerable amount of time writing about my concerns regarding the direction of the preprint ecosystem and the behaviour of some of the actors within it. Increasingly, I worry that preprinting is being pushed toward becoming little more than a replica of the existing scholarly publishing system. For those of us who see preprints as an opportunity for genuine and meaningful change, that would be a profound disaster.
Despite these concerns, I remain a strong advocate for preprinting. In fact, they reinforce why I continue to invest time in producing resources and materials that support preprint adoption. The potential remains enormous but the challenge is ensuring that potential is not squandered and wasted.
This week, openRxiv announced the launch of openRxiv labs; something they teased back at the CZI Open Science meeting in 2025. This might seem like just another announcement but the implications for such a program are huge. The implications of a programme like this could be significant—not just for preprints themselves, but for the future of scholarly communication more broadly. So, what exactly is openRxiv Labs, and why does it give me renewed optimism about the future of preprints?
“This might seem like just another announcement but the implications for such a program are huge”
Before discussing what this is and means, I just wanted a word on openRxiv itself. The creation of this nonprofit to oversee the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint servers was an important, positive, step. It provides a dedicated home for some of the world’s most influential preprint platforms while creating opportunities that previously did not exist.
This allows for not only this kind of experimentation but also for more direct advocacy efforts for stand-alone preprints. These are precisely the two things that the preprint space perhaps needs most right now. Experimentation is essential if preprints are to evolve beyond being simply an earlier version of the journal article. Advocacy is equally important if researchers are to understand, trust, and embrace that evolution. OpenRxiv is uniquely positioned to contribute to both.
What is openRxiv Labs?
What is openRxiv Labs? Well perhaps it’s best to let the openRxiv team answer that one; “openRxiv Labs runs a select number of experiments each year with value-aligned partners. Each experiment tests a specific hypothesis about how research communication can improve, with measurable goals and open publication of results.” In practical terms, openRxiv Labs serves as a dedicated environment for testing new ideas around research communication and preprints. Rather than assuming what the future should look like, the programme is designed to explore possibilities through structured experimentation.
This is important because experimentation has always been one of the most compelling yet surprisingly underutilised advantages of preprints. Freed from many of the constraints of traditional publishing, preprints create opportunities to test new formats, workflows, technologies, and approaches to communicating research.
Curvenote; the first experiment
Given the close working relationship between the CSF and openRxiv, it is perhaps not surprising that the first experiment involves Curvenote.
I was first introduced to Curvenote in 2023/24 and from first interaction thought it was brilliant. FWIW, my first thought was; this would be great for preprints. In a nutshell, Curvenote reader is what reading an article in the 21st century should be. It’s interactive and enhances the reading experience. Figures can become more dynamic. Data can be explored more directly. Additional context can be surfaced without interrupting the flow of reading. The result is a richer and more engaging experience that moves beyond simply replicating a PDF on a screen.
For years, many discussions about scholarly communication have focused on making research more open. Curvenote points toward another important question: how can we make research more usable? That is what makes this first experiment particularly exciting. It is not simply testing a new feature. It is exploring whether preprints can become a fundamentally better way to communicate science.
The video below introduces Curvenote more generally.
One point that would be nice to see but is currently missing is how each experiment is being assessed. What is being measured? What does success look like for any given experiment?
Read more about the first experiment: https://openrxivlabs.org/curvenote-reader
A new hope; a program arriving at just the right time
One of the things I have argued for years about the preprint ecosystem is that the first decade was necessarily focused on establishing preprinting itself. The priority needed to be adoption, infrastructure and demonstrating that sharing research before journal publication could work within the Life Science for more than just a short experiment.
The next decade, however, needs a different focus. Rather than just explaining why researchers should use preprints, we should be creating compelling reasons for them to want to use preprints. We should be asking how preprints can become more useful, more engaging, more transparent, and ultimately more valuable than traditional journal articles. In short, we should be making preprints “better”.
To me, that is the path toward preprints achieving their full transformative potential. It requires a willingness to move beyond replicating the journal system in a different format. It means being bolder than the space has been so far. It means leading with values, experimenting responsibly, and pushing the boundaries of what scholarly communication can be.
And it is this exactly what openRxiv labs appears poised to facilitate. The vision appears to be one of careful experimentation rather than pursuing efforts based solely on opinion, intuition, or pet projects. The scholarly communication landscape is often shaped by strong beliefs and competing agendas and so a commitment to evidence-led innovation is particularly welcome.
That matters because the success of preprints will not depend on introducing enhancements for their own sake. It will depend on identifying which innovations genuinely improve the research communication process, which do not and which actually get used by researchers. A measured, scientific approach offers the best chance of finding those answers while also helping to rebuild trust in research reform efforts more broadly.
Of course, innovation alone is not enough. There remains a pressing need for advocacy across the preprint landscape to help researchers understand the value of preprints, address persistent misconceptions, and build a stronger collective vision for the future. Not to mention expand adoption beyond the same geographical regions. I hope this is an area that openRxiv is already considering and working towards.
There are potentially enormous benefits to bringing innovation and advocacy closer together under a shared umbrella. At a time when the wider open research movement often feels fragmented, openRxiv is uniquely positioned to provide coordination, leadership, and a focal point for progress. The benefits would extend well beyond preprints themselves and could help strengthen trust, collaboration, and reform efforts across the research ecosystem.
An exciting development to watch
The announcement itself was relatively simple. Yet beneath that simplicity lies the possibility of something genuinely important.
OpenRxiv Labs has the potential to help transform preprints from an alternative way of publishing into the foundation of a new model for communicating research. If successful, preprints could become more trustworthy than journal articles, easier to navigate, richer in context, and more enjoyable to read. They could offer a better experience for researchers, reviewers, and readers alike. More importantly, they could help reveal what the next evolution of scholarly communication looks like.
That is why openRxiv Labs is one of the most exciting developments in the research communication space right now—and one well worth watching closely.
Follow openRxiv labs: https://openrxivlabs.org/
Read the announcement: https://openrxiv.org/openrxiv-labs-launch/
Rippling Ideas 