Gaétan Burgio — bioRxiv Affiliate

Gaétan Burgio has been a bioRxiv affiliate since 2020. He is a Principal Investigator at the Australian National University researching on host pathogens interaction on multidrug resistant bacteria and the malaria parasite. He enjoys helping the bioRxiv team post manuscripts online because it helps other researchers. He also supports the bioRxiv mission because the server allows him to discover new and relevant science discoveries. In this interview, he shares why he likes being an Affiliate and why others should consider it.

When did you join as an affiliate and why?

I joined as an affiliate over 3 years ago, I believe. I was familiar with bioRxiv having posted a few preprints previously and was interested in promoting preprints. I have a vague recollection that Richard [Sever, bioRxiv co-founder] was somehow a trigger by inviting me to comment on preprints at the beginning of the pandemic.

Why do you enjoy being an affiliate?

I like seeing manuscripts from different areas of research and helping my colleagues disseminate their research. I also like interacting with the bioRxiv team and helping them.

Why others might like to join?

Others might join to contribute and help the community in rapidly disseminating science but I guess everyone has their own reasons to join as an affiliate.

What have you learned by being an Affiliate?

What have I learnt? A lot of interesting science in screening manuscripts outside of my area of research, for sure. It helps a lot for my own research. Related to my role as a COVID affiliate I have also learnt a lot on the making of an entire field of research in real time and how pseudoscience could rapidly emerge. It was quite an extraordinary time. I do like the concept of preprints where research is immediately available without having to wait a year or so of peer review. I do believe it helps Early Career Researchers enormously.

To promote the rapid dissemination of new research, bioRxiv and medRxiv depend on Affiliates who help screen manuscripts. Affiliates are active scientists who volunteer their time to quickly determine whether submitted articles include biological research and do not have the potential to cause harm to the public. Thanks to affiliates we can continue sharing new research within ~48h of submission. To learn more about our screening procedures please click here https://connect.biorxiv.org/news/2022/06/13/screening_procedures