1 Meta-Research: Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv 2 preprints 3 Richard J. Abdill1 and Ran Blekhman1,2 4 1 – Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development, University of Minnesota, 5 Minneapolis, MN 6 2 – Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, 7 MN 8 9 ORCID iDs 10 RJA: 0000-0001-9565-5832 11 RB: 0000-0003-3218-613X 12 13 Correspondence 14 Ran Blekhman, PhD 15 University of Minnesota 16 MCB 6-126 17 420 Washington Avenue SE 18 Minneapolis, MN 55455 19 Email:
[email protected] 1 20 Abstract 21 The growth of preprints in the life sciences has been reported widely and is 22 driving policy changes for journals and funders, but little quantitative information has 23 been published about preprint usage. Here, we report how we collected and analyzed 24 data on all 37,648 preprints uploaded to bioRxiv.org, the largest biology-focused preprint 25 server, in its first five years. The rate of preprint uploads to bioRxiv continues to grow 26 (exceeding 2,100 in October 2018), as does the number of downloads (1.1 million in 27 October 2018). We also find that two-thirds of preprints posted before 2017 were later 28 published in peer-reviewed journals, and find a relationship between the number of 29 downloads a preprint has received and the impact factor of the journal in which it is 30 published. We also describe Rxivist.org, a web application that provides multiple ways 31 to interact with preprint metadata. 32 Introduction 33 In the 30 days of September 2018, four leading biology journals – The Journal of 34 Biochemistry, PLOS Biology, Genetics and Cell – published 85 full-length research 35 articles.