Curvenote Reader brings a better reading experience to half a million openRxiv preprints
Better Reading, Same Infrastructure, Faster Science.
June 11, 2026
Half a million preprints, easier to explore.
We partnered with openRxiv to launch the first Curvenote Reader, layering a more connected reading experience across 460,282 preprint versions from bioRxiv, without requiring repository teams to rebuild infrastructure, redesign workflows, or disrupt production operations. The 103,863 preprint versions from medRxiv are next.
That scale matters.
Preprints are built for fast-moving science. They help researchers share work earlier, discover ideas faster, and follow scientific conversations as they evolve. But the experience of exploring research is still too fragmented. Readers leave the article to follow references, scroll down to zoom in on tables, read cited work, or track down supporting context across tabs, PDFs, and external pages.
Curvenote Reader brings that context directly into the flow of reading.
Anyone can hover over citations and drill as deep as they want pulling other open access work into their experience. They can inspect figures, zooming into the details. Best of all, they never have to lose their place in the text to explore references, figures, or metadata. Instead of downloading supporting material or scrolling to the bottom, wading through long reference sections, the surrounding scientific context becomes visible exactly at the point it is needed.
“Communication at the speed of science requires more than making research available quickly. Researchers also need to move through citations, figures, references, and related work without friction. Working with Curvenote through our new initiative openRxiv Labs gave us a way to explore that future without disrupting the infrastructure our repositories already rely on.”
Tracy Teal, CEO openRxiv
Modern experiences, existing infrastructure¶
Transforming scientific platforms at this scale is not a small challenge or something done quickly.
openRxiv’s corpus spans over a decade of publishing operations, metadata standards, structured content, in their repository workflows. Curvenote Reader was designed to work with that reality, not replace it.
The Curvenote team translated the existing corpus into a new reading interface by working directly with the structured data and systems already in place. No platform replacement. No production overhaul. No “stop everything while we refresh our systems”.
“Scientific infrastructure is hard. Repositories are maintaining massive systems under real operational and funding constraints, which makes upgrading risky by default. We built Curvenote Reader to work with the systems institutions already rely on, not force them into painful rebuilds. The best infrastructure partners move science forward alongside repositories, not against them.”
Rowan Cockett, Co-founder & CEO, Curvenote
Figure 1:Curvenote Reader in action for a bioRxiv preprint, you can try this preprint here (CC-BY-4.0).
Built with repository workflows in mind¶
One of the most important aspects of this partnership was operational continuity.
Repositories like openRxiv are stewarding enormous volumes of scientific knowledge while managing the realities of production systems, funding constraints, metadata pipelines, and day-to-day publishing operations. Improving the researcher experience cannot come at the cost of destabilizing the infrastructure that these teams depend on.
Curvenote Reader was built to layer onto those workflows, not interrupt them.
Curvenote worked directly with openRxiv’s existing structured data to build automated connectors and a seamless XML handoff into Curvenote Reader. That meant teams could continue operating the way they already do while delivering richer exploration and interfaces for researchers.
“What made this project exciting was proving that transformation does not have to mean disruption. We were able to work directly with the data and systems already in place at openRxiv and translate more than half a million preprints into a significantly better reading experience.”
Steve Purves, Co-founder & CTO, Curvenote
The openRxiv partnership shows what is possible when values aligned infrastructure partners understand the realities of science, the realities of maintaining open science repositories, and enabling the teams maintaining them.
Half a million preprints, easier to navigate, inspect, and understand.
Science, better connected.
