Richard Sever is Chief Science and Strategy Officer at openRxiv, the non-profit organization that runs the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv, which he co-founded. Richard obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford, graduating with 1st Class honours in Biochemistry. He switched to Cambridge for his PhD, researching gene regulation at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Richard then trained as an editor, working first at Current Opinion in Cell Biology and then Trends in Biochemical Science. He later became Executive Editor of Journal of Cell Science at The Company of Biologists, where he played an important role developing their publication program.

Richard joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2008 and was appointed Assistant Director of its press in 2012. He launched the journals Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology and Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, serving as Executive Editor, alongside Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. He also edited several books, including the textbook Signal Transduction and the handbook Career Alternatives for Biomedical Scientists. Richard co-founded bioRxiv in 2013 and medRxiv in 2019 to allow scientists to share research much more rapidly. The servers became essential resources for researchers and played critical roles during the pandemic.

Richard is widely acknowledged as a leading thinker in scientific communication. In 2022, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cold Spring Harbor School of Biological Sciences in recognition of his work, and in 2025 he was recognized by Time magazine in their Time100 list of the most influential people in health. Richard was awarded The Royal Society Research Culture Award in 2025 for outstanding work in the improvement of the research system.