Funders and Knockoff Bags
It's looking like funders are moving away from publishers more and more
As if we needed any further evidence that the implicit goal of funders supporting the OA movement was to give their funded research a clearer path to citation at lower costs, we now see two funders squaring off in 2025 — Gates and CZI — with policies around preprints that may foreshadow a broader change of heart, namely opting to forego designer bags (journals) and instead settling on cheap knockoffs (preprints).
Yesterday, a new non-profit — openRxiv — was announced. It’s going to be the umbrella entity for bioRxiv and medRxiv. Richard Sever will be leaving Cold Spring Harbor Labs to become the chief scientific and strategy officer of openRxiv. There is a job posting for a new CEO.
This follows the announcement last April from the Gates Foundation that it would be launching VeriXiv, powered by F1000 Research. So far, nothing has appeared.
The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has funded bioRxiv and medRxiv since the start, and is funding the establishment of openRxiv, as well. The latest grant is worth $16 million.
CZI has granted the preprint servers $31.7 million since 2017, so this represents more than half their entire funding from CZI.
For $16 million, CZI has bought itself a board chair seat. And maybe more.