In accordance with Guideline 13(interner Link), researchers take responsibility for how to publicise their research results. In doing so, they carefully select the publication medium in accordance with Guideline 15(interner Link). Publishing preprints is one possible form of publication, involving a persistent identifier and ensuring long-term availability.

By general definition, preprints are academic publications that appear before a peer review has been carried out or without such a review being conducted at all. Preprints can be quality-assessed by peers at a later stage. There are varying interpretations of the term “preprint” across disciplines, and discipline-specific differences in the number of preprints that are subsequently (re)published in a journal.

Preprints not only speed up the publication process, they can also be a good way for researchers – especially early career researchers – to make their results available to the research community early on, thereby enabling them to obtain feedback more quickly.

They are usually published on so-called preprint servers or online repositories set up specifically for this purpose. These can be either cross-disciplinary (e.g. arXiv(externer Link)) or discipline-specific (e.g. bioRxiv(externer Link), SocArXiv(externer Link) and PsyArXiv(externer Link)). In addition, there are regional repositories or preprint servers that are linked to certain funding organisations, publishers or journals. The publication of preprints is more established in some fields of research than in others. Sharing preprints is already common practice in the natural and life sciences such as physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology and psychology, as well as economics.

Please note the following

1) When publishing preprints

When publishing preprints, researchers should take care to find a suitable server or repository that meets the necessary standards and is actively used in their research community. In addition, authors should ensure their preprints have a licence(interner Link) so as to transparently grant other researchers certain rights of subsequent use. Some preprint servers such as EarthArXiv provide specific instructions for marking a publication as a preprint: one of the conditions for submitting a manuscript is that authors include a note on the cover page or in the header to identify it as a preprint.

2) When using preprints as references

The use of preprints as academic references has been the subject of intense debate. It is now widely recognised that preprints are academic sources that can be evaluated and referenced in research work. When citing and referencing, the source should be named correctly, and if necessary an explanation should be provided as to why the selected version is cited. In some disciplines there are guidelines for referencing preprints: for example, the recommendations of the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) state that ‘when a preprint article has been subsequently published in a peer-reviewed journal, authors should cite the subsequent published article rather than the preprint article whenever appropriate’.

This article is based on

Frisch, Preprints, in: Frisch/Hagenström/Reeg, Wissenschaftliche Fairness, p.65-67, Bielefeld 2022.

Frisch, Nutzen oder Risiko? Die Rolle von Preprints in der Wissenschaft in: Forschung & Lehre 10|23.

On this topic see also

Discussion Document zum Thema Preprints des Committee on Publication Ethics (Cope), 2018.(externer Link)

Guide on distinguishing between preprints and postprints, produced by the Digital Repository of Iowa State University, 2013.(externer Link)

Open policy finder (formerly: Search Sherpa Services , or Sherpa Romeo and Sherpa Juliet respectively): Database for searching journal policies relating to preprints, self-archiving and open access(externer Link)

ICMJE recommendations on preprints: Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, 2024.(externer Link)

Chaleplioglou, A., & Koulouris, A. (2023). Preprint paper platforms in the academic scholarly communication environment. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 55(1), 43-56.(externer Link)