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Scholarly Publishing

This LibGuide on Scholarly Publishing shows you how to select and vet credible journals as well as informs you about your author rights.

What are the Versions of Research Outputs?

Researchers can often openly share and/or retain rights to their preprints or postprints (also called the “Author's Final Manuscript” or “Author's Accepted Manuscript”). Some researchers post these versions online in repositories (known as Green Open Access). PubMed Central, for example, allows researchers to post and search for postprints otherwise known as the “Author's Final Manuscripts”.

SHERPA/RoMEO will walk researchers through their rights to archive specific versions of research on a journal-by-journal basis.

Versions of Research - Preprints and Postprints

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint#/media/File:Preprint_postprint_published.svg

Versions of Research Output Explained

  • Preprint version of research precedes formal peer-review
  • Sometimes made available before publication in a journal in repositories like arXiv.org, bioRxiv.org, etc.; sometimes, certain journals will not publish your journal article if version of your manuscript is found someplace else – best to contact publishers of interest to see if posting of preprints is allowed for publication in their journal
  • Sometimes posting is required by funders
  • Sometimes journals require you take down your preprint upon publication in their journal
  • Though preprints do not fall under the NIH Public Access Policy, the NIH encourages investigators to use interim research products, including preprints and preregistered protocols.
  • The NIH Preprint Pilot: a project of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). During the pilot, NLM will make preprints resulting from research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) available via PubMed Central (PMC) and, by extension, PubMed. The pilot aims to explore approaches to increasing the discoverability of early NIH research results posted to eligible preprint servers.
  • List of Academic Journals by Preprint Policy

bioRxiv
bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is a free online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. It is operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution.

medRxiv
medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive and distribution server for complete, but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences.

OSFPreprints
Preprints dedicated to different disciplines. Run by the Center for Open Science.

Johns Hopkins University Institutional Repository (JScholarship)
JScholarship is designed to gather, distribute, and preserve digital materials related to the Johns Hopkins research and instructional mission. Content is deposited directly by Johns Hopkins faculty and staff, and includes born-digital or digitized research and instructional materials.

More information can be found on the Sheridan Libraries Open Access Guide.

  • Version of Research that is peer-reviewed and precedes publication
  • May not include copyediting  and formatting, so it will appear different than the publisher’s PDF
  • Sometimes called the “Author’s Final Manuscript” OR “Author’s Accepted Manuscript”
  • You can find these versions of research in PubMed Central and other repositories; sometimes permission to post postprints is delayed following an embargo period of six months or a year. Also, the permission to post postprints may come with requirements, for example, to include information about the publisher's copyright on the cover page of the postprint