Think you’re ready to submit your manuscript to eiRxiv? First,
We use these same criteria during prereview. Checking your manuscript yourself before submitting may help increase the likelihood that it will pass prereview.
Permanent DOI
When you post your research on eiRxiv, it becomes publicly available for anyone to read, share, and cite. Every preprint at eiRxiv is assigned a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which makes your manuscript part of the scientific record. A DOI makes it easier for readers to find, cite, and share the research.
It’s important to remember that a DOI is a permanent identifier – meaning the manuscript’s title, publication date, and any other identifying data will be permanently associated with each author’s name. Preprints cannot be withdrawn after they are posted except in rare cases (e.g. there is an error or misconduct). Even if a preprint is withdrawn, the DOI with the title and author names will still be publicly available. All authors must understand and agree to these conditions before posting their manuscript on eiRxiv.
Copyright and Licensing
All preprints on eiRxiv are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0). This license allows you and others to share, reuse, and build upon your work, as long as they give proper credit to you as the original author.
At eiRxiv, we believe students’ work should be easy to share, build on, and learn from. By choosing CC-BY:
CC-BY lets your preprint be part of the scientific community while protecting your authorship.
This means:
✅You are the copyright holder of your preprint, including the text and the data.
✅People can share and reuse your preprint but must give credit by citing your work.
✅You can submit your preprint (text and/or data) to be published in a peer-reviewed journal at a later date.
eiRxiv and JEI serve different roles in the scientific community, so they use different Creative Commons licenses.
No. You should only submit the same manuscript to one preprint at a time. And although you can submit your manuscript to a journal after posting on eiRxiv, posting the same manuscript on more than one preprint server isn’t allowed.
For copyright reasons, eiRxiv does not accept manuscripts that have passed scientific review at other journals. We also do not accept pre-publication proofs from other journals.
If you submit to JEI and eiRxiv at the same time, your JEI manuscript will be placed on hold until your eiRxiv manuscript receives scientific feedback or a final decision. This allows you to incorporate your eiRxiv scientific feedback and improve your manuscript before submitting to JEI.
Yes! Posting on eiRxiv does not stop you from publishing in a peer-reviewed journal like the Journal of Emerging Investigators. If you submit to a journal after your preprint is posted, you should let them know that your work has been previously posted as a preprint, so you can follow their policies. You also need to inform our eiRxiv editors if your preprint is published in a peer reviewed journal so we can add the new publication’s link to your preprint record.
Absolutely. Since your preprint is licensed under CC-BY, you can share it anywhere as long as you give credit to all of the authors.
Citation styles vary, though you can learn more about citing preprints from NIH and OSF. We recommend:
Author names. “Title” eiRxiv. Date Month Year. DOI.
Example: Smith, Marcus and Anna Wang. “Impact of atmospheric CO2 concentration on Littorina obtusata shell strength.” February 17, 2026. DOI: 10.6981/12345678a
Once you’ve checked your finished manuscript and made sure it meets all of our guidelines, you’re ready to submit! To do this:
The Coordinating Adult should:
After receiving this invite, the first student author should:
If you have questions during the submission process, please contact us.
