Physics Server Adds Biology

One of the oldest and most popular physics preprint servers has created a new section for quantitative biology at http://arXiv.org/archive/q-bio . Before arXiv.org launched q-bio, roughly 40 submissions per month were related to biology. Those papers were split between the existing physics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, and mathematics subdisciplines hosted by arXiv.org . Since the launch of q-bio—which incorporates the existing biological content in the archive—biology-related submissions have increased by a factor of two, says arXiv.org founder Paul Ginsparg of Cornell University.

The drive to create the new preprint section came from pressure within the quantitative biology community to have a centralized archive to share their results, say q-bio coordinators Terry Hwa of the University of California, San Diego, and Michael Lässig of the University of Cologne in Germany. “The hope is that concentrating them in one place will facilitate the growth of this community and perhaps attract readers and ultimately submitters from conventional areas of biology,” adds Ginsparg.