Quick Submission Guide

Before you publish a preprint, please ensure the following:

• All co-authors are fully aware of and agree to publish the preprint article on ScieRxiv. 

• All authors are aware of the ScieRxiv retraction policy, understanding that preprints cannot be completely deleted once submitted;

• Experiments involving animals, humans or plants are properly reported and ethically approved; 

• Any necessary copyright permission has been obtained; 

• Study data are available.

Introduction to ScieRxiv preprint

ScieRxiv is a multidisciplinary preprint service that welcomes researchers in all fields, including biology and life sciences, business and economics, chemistry and materials science, computer science and mathematics, engineering, environmental and earth sciences, medicine and pharmacology, physical sciences, public health and healthcare, and social sciences, arts and humanities.

OAE Topics in ScieRxiv is a service for authors seeking to submit to a journal after publishing a paper on ScieRxiv. Following submission of a preprint through ScieRxiv, authors may receive an invitation to contribute to relevant OAE journals. The authors can benefit from: 

• Layout Editing: Assistance from a Layout Editor who prepares your publication for submission in accordance with the Journal template. 

• Journal Recommendation: Our in-house editors will extend invitations to contribute to relevant OAE-related journals. Upon acceptance of the invitation, your article submission information will seamlessly transfer from ScieRxiv to the submission system of the OAE journal, expediting the processing of your submission.

Authorship

All authors must be thoroughly aware of the content submitted to ScieRxiv and agree that only individuals meeting the authorship criteria will be listed as authors. Contributors who aided the work but do not meet authorship criteria should be listed in the ”Acknowledgments”. We refer to the ICMJE recommendations on authorship and the Credit taxonomy. 

Any alterations to the list of authors should be approved by all authors, including those who have been removed from the list. The roles and responsibilities of the corresponding author include: 

• Notifying all co-authors to submit to ScieRxiv (Each co-author will receive a confirmation email after submission);

• Managing correspondence between ScieRxiv and co-authors, keeping the entire co-author community informed throughout the submission, announcement, and update process;

• Ensuring that all co-authors are aware of ScieRxiv's policies (including items such as publication ethics, data and supplemental material deposition, conditions for withdrawal, copyright, and licenses);

•  Bearing full responsibility for answering questions/comments about published preprints and for providing requested data or materials. 

•  ORCID is a standard, persistent author identifier. We encourage all authors to link their ORCID with their ScieRxiv account during the submission process.

Format Requirements

Any style is allowed for submitted papers. However, all publisher and journal logos and names should be removed.

The first page of the manuscript must contain the title, author list, abstract, keywords, corresponding author contact information, and affiliations of all authors.

To facilitate identification of the author, authors should use an institutional email address (provided by their university, for example), or an email address used in previously published papers whenever possible. We recommend using the ORCID identifier. 

Files should be submitted in Microsoft Word or LaTeX format. For LaTeX files, ensure all necessary files to recreate the PDF are included in a zip or similar archive.

To ensure readability and clarity, we recommend generating a graphic summary to display on the website along with the text summary. Graphics should be provided in JPG, PNG, or GIF format.

Publishing Ethics

ScieRxiv adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. Note that COPE does not currently cover preprints specifically, but many of the same principles apply, including the following:

• Authors must accurately present their findings and objectively discuss the significance of their findings.

• Practices such as plagiarism, data forgery and image manipulation, knowingly providing incorrect information, copyright infringement, inaccurate attribution of authorship, attempts to improperly manipulate the screening process, failure to declare conflicts of interest, fraud and defamation are prohibited;

• Submitted materials shall not be illegal;

• Manuscripts containing studies conducted on humans or experimental animals must follow the Declaration of Helsinki and contain details of approval from the Research Ethics Committee. At a minimum, the project identification code, approval date, and the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be cited in the “Methods” section;

• Informed consent must be obtained from the study participants when necessary, and the authors must be able to provide a copy of the (edited) consent form;

• ScieRxiv will strictly enforce its standards and will follow up on infringement cases. In extreme cases, we may require individuals to report to their agency;

• ScieRxiv applies the following ICMJE definition of a conflict of interest: "A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment regarding a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be compromised by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflicts of interest are just as important as actual conflicts of interest."

Reproduction of Material Published by Other Publishers

Authors must obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, schemes, tables, or any excerpts from a text) that is not in the public domain or for which they do not own the copyright. The authors must request permission from the copyright holder before posting to ScieRxiv.

Permission is required for: 

• Your own works published by other publishers and for which you do not retain copyright;

• Substantial extracts from anyone's work;

• Use of tables, graphs, charts, schemes, and artworks, if they are unaltered or with minor changes;

• Photographs for which you do not own the copyright. 

Permission is not required for: 

• Reconstruction of your own tables using data previously published elsewhere. Note that in this case, you must refer to the source of the data in the form of a "Data from..." Or "Adapted from...";

• Short cites that are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission must also be properly cited;

• Charts, diagrams, schemes, and artworks are entirely redrawn by the authors and are significantly altered beyond recognition.

Withdrawal Policy

All authors need to understand that preprints cannot be deleted once published. Once a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is registered, information about the preprint will be permanently available.

Articles may be edited or deleted before they are submitted and published. From then on, articles will be deleted only at the discretion of preprint editors and the advisory board and for the following reasons:

• Misconduct by authors, including plagiarism and data falsification;

• Serious scientific errors that cannot be corrected by updating the paper;

• Where leaving a paper online would constitute a violation of the law, including copyright infringement;

ScieRxiv reserves the right to remove preprints without notice for good reason.

Note that authors can update preprints at any time, and we do not consider rejection from a journal to be a sufficient reason for deletion. Preprints will not be removed to allow journal submission, and authors should check in advance whether the journal they intend to submit to accepts preprints.