Globe Biotech has recently claimed that the paper on the trial of its vaccine in mice has been published on bioRxiv (BioArxiv), which proves that their vaccine is fully effective.

But what ought to be known here is that bioRxiv is not a peer-reviewed journal. It is better described as a place that holds preprints. Those of us with some idea of how scientific journals work know that a paper cannot be relied upon unless it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

What is a peer-reviewed journal?

Journals whose articles are published only after being checked by peers — that is, by expert researchers — are called peer-reviewed journals. In other words, every article published in such a journal has been through scrutiny first. So there is no doubt about those articles.

What is bioRxiv?

bioRxiv is merely an archive. That is, it can only be described as a collection of articles, rather like a library. They have stated clearly on their own website:

“A great many articles about the coronavirus have come to bioRxiv, and they are not peer reviewed. So health guidance cannot be given on the basis of these articles, and they do not consider them suitable for reporting in the press.” (in summary)

So it cannot yet be said how effective the vaccine is on the basis of their trial. Publishing news on that basis is in no way reasonable.

We are hopeful, though, that if research advances like this we too will be able to give the world a vaccine.

To learn more on this, see:

1. https://www.biorxiv.org/about-biorxiv 2. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/what-unrefereed-preprint