Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced today that its life sciences preprint server bioRxiv has partnered with PaperPlayer, a service for converting manuscripts into high-quality audio, to provide audio versions of preprint abstracts in the bioRxiv Neuroscience category. This new feature increases content accessibility and offers a way of obtaining information from preprints that’s an alternative to a screen. It is being piloted in the Neuroscience category to assess its value for preprint users.
"This new feature extends and diversifies the distribution of information from bioRxiv, making it more versatile and accessible," said John Inglis, co-founder of bioRxiv. "We are pleased to partner with PaperPlayer in this pilot and welcome community feedback as we consider extending the scope of preprint audio distribution”
"We are thrilled to partner with bioRxiv to increase accessibility to scientific research through audio abstracts”, said Taylor Hanayik, founder of PaperPlayer. “Our collaboration provides an innovative approach to consuming research, allowing listeners to stay up-to-date on the latest scientific findings. Audio is an underutilized modality in research communication, despite its potential to increase accessibility and engagement with scientific content. The partnership between bioRxiv and PaperPlayer aims to address this gap by providing an alternative mode for consuming scientific content, thereby enhancing the dissemination of research findings. We look forward to continuing our partnership with bioRxiv and exploring new ways to bring audio publishing to the forefront of scientific communication."
bioRxiv readers can access the audio content by clicking on the Audio Abstract link on preprints in the Neuroscience category found either on the main site or in the Neuroscience Collection Page. Guidance on how to do this is illustrated on the bioRxiv site.The bioRxiv team is collecting responses to this initiative and has a dedicated webpage through which bioRxiv users can share reactions and make suggestions for developing the feature.
About bioRxiv
Founded in 2013 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an institution dedicated to research, education, and communication in the life sciences, bioRxiv is a preprint server that enables scientists worldwide to distribute and read research manuscripts free of charge, accelerating the pace of science. It currently contains more than 191,000 preprints from 190 countries. Since 2017, bioRxiv has received core support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
About PaperPlayer
PaperPlayer was created in 2020 as a service to convert open access academic articles to audio using the latest text-to-speech AI technology. PaperPlayer has developed a novel, automated audio publishing workflow and API that complements traditional text-based academic publishing. Today, PaperPlayer offers multiple public podcasts allowing anyone to experience the latest open access life sciences work as audio articles. The founder, Taylor Hanayik, is a software engineer based in Oxford, UK.