Preprints: Accelerating Research

1. What Is a Preprint?


Preprints Have Not Been Peer Reviewed


Peer Review in the Stages of Printing Stages of printing showing preprint to Author Manuscript with Peer Review emphasized

Peer review is generally a required step for original research to go through before being published in a scholarly journal. A formal peer review process typically involves scientific and editorial review from other researchers with relevant expertise.

Manuscript authors often then take these comments and rework their paper to address the issues identified. Peer review is intended to ensure high quality and careful considerations for rigorous research.

Because peer review is not a requirement for the public posting of preprints, repositories, servers, and indices post clear warnings about this distinction on their platforms. On PubMed CentralĀ® (PMC), this distinction is made clear on each preprint by a large banner at the top of the article denoting that peer review has not occurred yet. Other preprint servers, such as medRxiv, also denote this on their home page and each article record.

Preprint Banner in PubMed Central Image of the prominent information panel that displays on all preprint records. The text in the panel says: This is a preprint. It has not yet been peer reviewed by a journal. The National Library of Medicine is running a pilot to include preprints that result from research funded by NIH in PMC and PubMed.