6  Preprints

A preprint is a version of a manuscript that is published before the so-called Version of Record (VoR) is published. The VoR is the version as it is produced by a publisher in a journal (generally with the publisher’s layout etc).

6.1 Advantages of preprints

Preprints have a number of advantages. First, they can be published when (or before) you submit a manuscript, considerably speeding up science. Second, they are generally published Open Access, which makes your article open access even if it ends up being published behind a paywall (see Chapter 7). Third, they allow you to obtain peer reviews from more peers than the designated reviewers. Fourth, preprinted articles receive more citations than non-preprinted articles.

Because of this last reason, most editors (and so, journals) are in favour of preprinting. There are some exceptions though, and if you want to check, there is the excellent Sherpa Romeo website, which indexes all pubishers’ and journals’ policies regarding what you’re allowed to do with which versions of the manuscript file: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/.

6.2 Using Open Preprint Servers

Also because of this last reason, many publishers now also created their own preprint servers, offering to preprint your article in the submission process. However, given that publisher’s interests are not the same as those of science, it is better to not rely on their to provide this infrastructure. In addition, linking the preprint to the associated data, materials, and preregistration makes your products much easier to find by interested colleagues.

Therefore, using Open Science Framework preprint servers, such as PsyArXiv or one of the other preprint servers at https://osf.io/preprints is usually your best option. You can then immediately link the preprint to your OSF repository.

6.3 Linking the DOIs

Preprints receive DOIs so that they are instantly citeable. In addition, you can update the preprint with the DOI of the published version of the article. This allows bibliographic databases and services such as OpenAlex to know that the two DOIs describe one academic work, which makes it possible to accumulate all citations .

6.4 Pro tips

If you post a preprint, you can add additional appendices at the end, and/or a frontpage where you link interested readers to additional resources. An example is available at https://doi.org/jnjp.

In addition, once your preprint’s DOI is minted (i.e. its registration is processed by https://crossref.org, you can use CrossRef’s ShortDOI service to create a ShortDOI. ShortDOIs always resolve to the corresponding DOI. ShortDOIs are convenient short unique identifiers for an article, great for e.g. slides. In addition, because the resulting URL is very short, the resulting QR code is simpler, allowing it to be scanned succesfully from a greater distance.