What are preprints and preprint servers?

What is a preprint?

A preprint, also known as the Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM), is the version of your article before you have submitted it to a journal for peer review.

What is a preprint server?

Preprint servers are online repositories which enable you to post this early version of your paper online.

In some academic disciplines preprint servers are now commonly used. Among the most well known are:

• ArXiv (physical sciences) 
• SocArXiv (social sciences)
• bioRxiv (biology)

There are, however, equivalents for most research areas. They are an opportunity to get your work out to your peers quickly. Although readers need to keep in mind that preprints will not have been through a formal peer review process.

What are the benefits of preprints?

Speed – your manuscript can become available for others to read before the final version of it is published. As publication times can sometimes be lengthy, this gives other researchers a chance to see your work a lot quicker.

Authorship – the preprint is a public record that you published that research at that time. Your work will likely be assigned a digital object identifier (DOI).

Review – posting your preprint allows other researchers to offer feedback that may help to improve your article before the more formal journal peer review process.

Research impact – the research presented in your preprint will be publicly available for other researchers or practitioners to cite and build upon more quickly.

Submitting to a Taylor & Francis journal

If you upload an early version of your article to a non-commercial preprint server, you can subsequently submit to a Taylor & Francis or Routledge journal. We do not consider posting on a preprint server to be duplicate publication and this will not jeopardize consideration for publication.

If you’ve posted your AOM to a preprint server, please cite your preprint in the manuscript you submit to the journal, to ensure there will be a link to the AOM from the final Version of Record (VOR).

Then, once your article is accepted, we ask that you update the preprint to acknowledge that the article has been accepted for publication as follows:

“This article has been accepted for publication in [JOURNAL TITLE], published by Taylor & Francis.”

After publication you can add the following text to your preprint to encourage others to read and cite the final published version of your article:

“This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [JOURNAL TITLE] on [date of publication], available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/[Article DOI].”

Find out more about sharing different versions of your article.