Cedric Boeckx— bioRxiv Affiliate

Cedric Boeckx is a Research Professor at ICREA (Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies) and University of Barcelona, Spain researching the neurobiological foundations of our remarkable ability to learn and use language. Cedric has been a bioRxiv Affiliate since 2020 and has posted over 20 preprints himself. He loves to play a part in the acceleration of science that bioRxiv preprints represent and encourages researchers to take advantage of all bioRxiv has to offer. In this interview, he shares his reasons for championing bioRxiv and why others should join in too.

Why did you decide to join bioRxiv as an Affiliate?

It felt like the right thing to do given that I was getting so much out of bioRxiv for my own work — it’s the least I could do. I was very happy when Richard (Sever) offered me the oportunity to contribute in a small way to this initiative. In academia, we often volunteer to do work for the community (reviewing papers, grants, etc.) Screening papers for bioRxiv strikes me as a wonderful opportunity to help the community in an even better way: accelerating the pace at which work is made accessible to everyone. It’s something I’d like to keep doing, and something that I encourage others to do. In practice it means very little extra work. Most of the papers I screen I would read anyway when they show up on the bioRxiv website.

What do you enjoy most about being an Affiliate?

The feeling of being able to play a small part in a transformative movement that started over a decade ago and that has changed how work in the life sciences. It’s like taking the Shinkansen or the TGV — you feel you are part of something that speeds things up. bioRxiv is still a noun, but it also has become a verb: in the life sciences, you don’t just publish, you bioRxiv.

What have you learned by being an Affiliate?

Apart from learning a lot about different ways of structuring an argument across subfields in the life sciences, I also learned that we still have a way to go to truly take advantage of the opportunities preprint servers offer: all too often, I regret screening papers that “just” post the paper, but do not make supplementary files or the code readily available. That’s a shame, as it defeats the purpose of making the work available for immediate evaluation by all. I also learned to try to convince more people to post preprints, and here I think it’s fair to say I’m still puzzled by colleagues delaying posting on bioRxiv until, e.g., they know their papers is out for a review at fancy journals. Why not preprint earlier, and take advantage of early comments by readers of the preprint? Above all, I learned that for bioRxiv to work, there has to be a massive amount of work “behind the scenes”, done by the bioRxiv core team (not the Affiliates) — keeping the system running to make our work possible. It’s hard work, and it’s super impressive.

How has bioRxiv and/or medRxiv helped you in your career?

My own research is very interdisciplinary — it requires integrating genetics, neuroscience, developmental biology, and animal cognition. Thanks to bioRxiv, I can start trying to make sense of how the pieces fit together well before relevant papers appear “in print” (and I can get all the relevant papers in one place, not across so many journals). It’s happened to me a couple of time: I see a paper getting a lot of press, and I’m reminded I screened it one or two years before

What's your favorite thing about bioRxiv and/or medRxiv?

The efficiency and reliability of its staff (critical for the community to use this resource), and also the fact that every so often new features are added to the system, improving what we can do with preprints (speaking of which, the site has wonderful Comment and Community review sections that we, as researchers, should really make much more of).

Why would you encourage others to post preprints?

It’s really a no-brainer now, especially for junior researchers, who have worked really hard on a project for years. It’s a wonderful feeling for them to be able to publish it and get feedback. It makes their work exist, the way they want to show it. When they apply for jobs, they can list work that can be read by hiring/grant committees — much better than (in prep) or (submitted).

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