Preprints

We encourage our authors to submit manuscripts that have been previously published as preprints. Authors publishing in our journals may have shared their work ahead of submission, as well as during the journal's peer review process on repositories or preprint servers (such as MedRxiv etc.), as long as the server does not impose restrictions upon the author's full copyright and re-use rights.

Preprints are not considered prior publication, but it is essential that the preprint submitted in our journals is not under consideration by any other journal.

To ensure correct attribution to the original source (whether repositories or preprint servers), we suggest listing the preprint within the acknowledgment section of the manuscript and including the full citation in the reference list.

If the manuscript is accepted for publication, authors are encouraged to link their preprint with the published article to enable their readers to access the peer-reviewed version. Preprints that undergo a peer review process in one of journals will be published under the same licenses used for all the articles in the journal (for more information on the licenses, please check the Open Access tab).

Pre-print FAQs

  • The submitted version of an author's work may be uploaded to a preprint server either before or concurrently with its submission to one of our journals.

  • Uploading a manuscript on a pre-print server before submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal has benefits such as early feedback, establishing priority, speeding up dissemination of knowledge, and increasing transparency.

  • The published article's acknowledgements will make reference to the preprint.