The artificial intelligence platform developer QED Science has analysed 57,455 life science preprints posted on bioRxiv between May 2025 and April 2026 to identify “The 1%”: a cohort of 574 preprints recognized for exceptional originality and scientific validity. The manuscripts were scored anonymously, without author names, institutional affiliations, or countries considered in the assessment.
The results for Austria are particularly striking. According to QED Science, Austria achieved an inclusion rate of 3.1percent — more than three times the expected one percent baseline — making it the clearest overperformer among the countries analysed.
IMBA is one of the major institutional contributors to this result. Of Austria’s 31 preprints included in “The 1%”, eight include IMBA. The analysis also specifically highlights the Vienna BioCenter, noting that several of Austria’s leading contributors — including IMBA, the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), and the Max Perutz Labs — share a single campus.
QED Science describes Austria’s success as the result of “a compact, well-resourced cluster, tightly wired into the global research network.” Austrian preprints included in “The 1%” list an average of 3.4 countries per paper, compared with 2.1 across the cohort as a whole, underlining the international reach of the country’s top-performing research. Moreover, QED Science recognised the high degree of collaboration as a defining feature of the Vienna BioCenter.
For IMBA, the findings highlight the institute’s contribution to a thriving and internationally connected life science ecosystem in Vienna — one that combines focused scientific expertise with broad global connections.