Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A paper posted to bioRxiv with a DOI prior to journal submission
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A peer-reviewed version of record posted on a personal website is not a preprint
Editorial commentary
A preprint is the version of a manuscript an author posts to a public server — bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, SSRN, Research Square, and discipline-specific equivalents — before formal peer review and journal acceptance. It carries a persistent identifier (typically a DOI), is openly readable, and is explicitly labelled as not-yet-peer-reviewed. Posting a preprint establishes priority and invites open commentary while the manuscript is still moving through, or before it has even entered, journal review.
How this differs from a postprint and the version of record
A preprint, postprint, and version of record (VoR) are three distinct states of the same underlying manuscript, not three unrelated documents. The preprint is posted before peer review has happened at all. The postprint (author-accepted manuscript) is posted after peer review and an editorial acceptance decision, but before the publisher’s typesetting. The version of record is the publisher’s final, typeset, paginated, citable output. A well-run preprint server links the preprint forward to the eventual published version once one exists, rather than leaving the two disconnected.
Versioning practice also differs by server, which matters for citation stability: arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv retain every prior version permanently and version-number each one. SSRN’s default behaviour instead replaces the existing record on revision unless the author opts into SSRN’s “Version Group” feature — a materially looser model than the arXiv/bioRxiv family, worth checking before citing a specific SSRN revision.
Example
A manuscript posted to bioRxiv with its own DOI, later submitted to and accepted by a journal, with the journal version cross-linked back to the original bioRxiv posting — a common, expected workflow rather than an exception.
Policy context
Funder and publisher treatment of preprints has moved from tolerated to actively encouraged in many fields: the NIH Preprint Pilot (2017) began indexing eligible preprints in PubMed Central, and several major funders now explicitly permit citing a preprint in a grant application as evidence of productivity. ASAPbio publishes widely-used guidance for researchers, journals, and institutions on preprint practice.
Some journals accept preprinted work as research letters, a short peer-reviewed format distinct from a full original article.
Also known as
Pre-print server posting · Preprint manuscript
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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