Preprints

Abstract

It’s a good practice to accept the submission of unreviewed and peer-reviewed preprints that are already available on preprint servers or in open repositories and include this in your policy. Authors should also be allowed to disseminate their preprint version(s) at any time before and after article acceptance and publishing. 

Main Text

Preprints are scientific manuscripts that are publicly shared prior to peer-review and journal publication via preprint platforms. An increasing number of journals accept sharing of preprints prior to publication. Early and open sharing is a part of transparent research practices and one of the measures to increase reproducibility of research outputs. 

Examples of preprint servers/repositories: Zenodo – multidisciplinary; ArXiv - physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics; bioRxiv - life sciences;  medRxiv – medicine and health sciences; SocArXiv - social sciences and humanities; PsyArxiv - behavioural sciences; LawArXiv – law; MediArXiv – media and communication studies; Knowledge Commons (formerly Humanities Commons) . Use the Directory of Open Access Preprint Repositories to find more, please browse by disciplines). 

Tips: 

• Diamond OA journals and publishers should include a note in their ‘Author’s responsibilities/ guidelines’ clauses that posting of preprints on preprint servers or repositories is not considered prior publication. Authors should be allowed to submit articles accompanied by the reviews provided by a preprint peer review platform such as PCI. 
• Authors should be asked to disclose details of preprint posting upon submission of the manuscript. This must include a link to the location of the preprint. 
• Note that full double-blind review is not an option for a journal when preprints are allowed, because it is impossible to ensure the anonymity of authors.
• Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version on the preprint server/repository to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.
• Authors should be allowed to disseminate their preprint version(s) at any time before and after article acceptance and publishing.

Related toolsuite articles

• Open Science Practices

Related guidelines and training materials

• Self-archiving policy

References 

• Arxiv https://arxiv.org/ 
• BioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/ 
• Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD). https://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr/en/ 
• Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). https://www.coar-repositories.org/ 
• Directory of Open Access Preprint Repositories. https://doapr.coar-repositories.org/  
• Knowledge Commons https://hcommons.org/core/ 
• LawArxiv https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv 
• medRxiv https://www.medrxiv.org/ 
• Peer Community In (PCI) https://peercommunityin.org. 
• PsyRxiv https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv 
• SocArxiv https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv 
• Zenodo https://zenodo.org/ 

Further reading

• European Commission. Horizon Europe Programme Guide, Version 4.0, 15 October 2023 https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/programme-guide_horizon_en.pdf 
• Preprint resource center: FAQs, policies, and materials. https://asapbio.org/preprint-info 
• Consortium of the DIAMAS project. (2024). The Diamond OA Standard (DOAS). Zenodo. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.12179619

Licensing

This article is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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