Author Compliance Tool

Use our ACT to check preprints policies of Wiley journals.

Wiley’s Preprints Policy

A preprint is a paper that is made available publicly via a community preprint server prior to (or simultaneous with) submission to a journal. Preprint servers, i.e., servers that allow for the posting of papers prior to submission for publication, are becoming more common across a range of disciplines.


Wiley believes journals should allow for the submission of manuscripts which have already been made available on such a server. Allowing submission does not, of course, guarantee that an article will be sent out for review; it simply reflects a belief that availability on a preprint server should not be a disqualifier for submission.


Wiley's Preprints Policy statement for subscription/hybrid open access journals

[Journal] will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.


Wiley's Preprints Policy statement for open access journals

[Journal] will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. Authors may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication.


Licensing implications

Authors should not assign copyright during the preprint process; authors should retain copyright in their work when posting to a preprint server.


Preferably, authors should only grant “no re-use” licenses to their preprints. However, Wiley will consider for publication submissions that have previously been assigned CC-BY (-NC/-NC-ND) as preprints. If a preprint has been posted under a CC license, it is still possible to publish in the journal under a standard Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) or an Exclusive License Agreement (ELA).


Implications for citation practices

Wiley encourages researchers and academics who reference preprints (like other peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources) to continue to cite these sources accurately.


Researchers can search preprint servers that are easily found using scholarly search engines or that are recognized and well-established.


If a preprint is assigned a DOI, Wiley will assign a new DOI to the accepted article and can optionally link to the preprint. Note that the preprint publisher must link to the published article, per CrossRef: “[Posted content] consists of preprints, eprints, working papers, reports, dissertations, and many other types of content that has been posted but not formally published… Once a journal article (or book, conference paper, etc.) has been published from the posted content and a DOI has been assigned, the posted content publisher will update their metadata to associate the posted content with the DOI of the accepted manuscript (AM) or version of record (VOR).”
More details are available here.


About this policy

The above sections detail Wiley's general policy for preprint submissions. A number of Wiley journals have set policies independently and authors should refer to the policy on the individual journal pages.