VeriXiv (pronounced Very-Kive) is a newly launched preprint server, through a collaboration between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and F1000 publishers. The main drive from the BMGF to create this platform is to align with their new open access policy. From the 1st January 2025, the Foundation expects that all funded articles “shall be published as a preprint in a preprint server recognized by the foundation or preapproved preprint server which applies a sufficient level of scrutiny to submissions”. A main reason for the push to preprints is the withdrawal by Gates of funding for APCs, they will no longer support gold open access. The Foundation makes it clear that any preprint server needs to provide a sufficient level of scrutiny. This has historically been a flaw with preprint servers, the lack of scholarly scrutiny and peer review to assess quality.
VeriXiv is different to typical preprint servers as it has prepublication checks to reduce the fear that anything can get past. These checks include verifying the genuine authors to weed out ‘paper mill’ contributors, checking language is inclusive and appropriate, ensuring methods are reproducible and software used in the research is linked too.
VeriXiv, as a verified preprint server is indexed by Google Scholar and feeds into PubMed and Web of Science. It provides a choice to authors either to keep the manuscript as a preprint (referred to by some publishers as the Author Original Manuscript) or go through the peer review process and have it published on the Gates Open Research platform. Authors can also choose to publish gold open access in a F1000 or Taylor & Francis (who own F1000) journal. However, publication in a gold open access journal will not result in BMGF funding the APCs. As the preprint in Verixiv has a CCBY license, it can be subsequently published in any other journal of the authors choice (including none open access journals) and still be compliant with the Gates policy.
