Skip to main content

Preprints

Peer Academics permits preprints and does not treat one as prior publication. You may post your manuscript to a recognized preprint server before you submit it here, while it is under review, and after it is published, and doing so will not by itself count against the manuscript. What the journal requires is that you tell the editor, that you keep the preprint honest about its status, and that you understand what posting does to the anonymity of review.

What counts as a preprint

A preprint is a complete manuscript posted to a public server that keeps it permanently available, assigns it a stable identifier, and marks it as not peer reviewed. Disciplinary and institutional servers both qualify; examples in the journal's subject areas include arXiv, SSRN, SocArXiv, OSF Preprints, RePEc, and PhilPapers, and a recognized server in your own field is equally acceptable. The journal does not endorse any particular server and does not require you to use one.

Posting the text on a personal or departmental web page, a lab site, an academic social network, or a file-sharing service is not a preprint in this sense. It is uncontrolled circulation: there is no version control, no timestamp anyone can rely on, and no way to link a later correction to it. The journal does not prohibit it, but it gives you none of the protections a preprint server does, and you must still disclose it.

What you must do at submission

  • Disclose the preprint in the comments to the editor, giving the server, the permanent link or identifier, and the date of the version posted.
  • Do not name the preprint inside the anonymized manuscript file. Doing so identifies you to reviewers and breaks the anonymization required by the Author Guidelines. The editor records the preprint separately.
  • Check the license under which you posted. Some licenses restrict what a journal may later do with the text. The journal's own licensing terms are not yet fixed — see the Publishing Model — so any incompatibility must be identified and resolved before acceptance, not after.
  • Say whether the posted version differs from the submitted one, and how.

If you do not disclose a preprint and the editor finds it during review, the manuscript is paused while the editor establishes what was posted and when. An undisclosed posting that turns out to be a published article rather than a preprint is handled as duplicate publication under Duplicate and Redundant Publication.

Preprints and double-anonymous review

Review at Peer Academics is double-anonymous. A public preprint carries your name, so a reviewer who searches for a distinctive phrase from your manuscript can find out who you are. The journal states this plainly rather than pretending the two are fully compatible. What the journal does about it:

  • Reviewers are instructed not to attempt to identify authors, and that instruction covers searching for the text online. A reviewer who nonetheless recognizes you must tell the editor and say whether they can still judge the work impartially; the editor decides whether to keep or replace them. See the Peer Review Policy.
  • The editor knows about the preprint and weighs any report that appears to be responding to the authors rather than to the manuscript.
  • The journal does not tell reviewers that a preprint exists, and does not send them to it.

The choice is yours. Posting a preprint establishes priority and makes the work available immediately; it also makes anonymity harder to maintain. Neither choice affects how the journal assesses your manuscript, and the journal does not ask you to take a preprint down as a condition of review.

Citing preprints in your manuscript

You may cite preprints, and you must do so accurately. Label the entry [Preprint], name the server, and give the identifier or permanent link, as shown in Referencing Style. Before you submit, check whether each preprint you cite has since been published in peer-reviewed form and, if it has, cite the published version. Where a claim in your argument depends on a preprint, say in the text that the source has not been peer reviewed, so that a reader can weigh it accordingly. Do not cite a preprint you have not read, and do not cite your own preprint in a way that identifies you in the anonymized file.

After acceptance and publication

  • Update the preprint record once the article appears, adding a link to the published version and a note that the peer-reviewed version of record is published in Peer Academics. This is your responsibility; the journal cannot edit a record on another service.
  • The journal does not require removal of the preprint. The preprint and the published article coexist, which is why the link between them matters.
  • What you may post of the published version — the accepted manuscript or the typeset file — depends on the licensing terms, which are stated to you in writing at acceptance. Do not assume; ask the editor if the terms are unclear to you.
  • If the article is later corrected or retracted, add a note to the preprint record saying so and pointing to the notice. See Corrections and Retractions.

Comments on a preprint

Public comments on your preprint are not peer review and are not treated as such here. If substantive criticism of the preprint bears on the manuscript under review — a serious error identified, a duplication alleged, a claim contested — tell the handling editor and say how you have responded. The editor may take it into account; a comment thread does not replace a reviewer's report, and the journal will not decline a manuscript on the strength of anonymous online commentary without independent assessment.

Peer Academics does not operate a preprint server, does not post submitted manuscripts publicly, and does not disclose the existence or content of a submission to anyone outside the editorial process.