Use our ACT to check Wiley journals' policies.
A preprint is a manuscript made publicly available that has not yet undergone formal peer review or publication in a journal. It is typically posted on a preprint server by the author either before or at the time of submission to a journal. Preprints allow findings to be disseminated quickly, allow feedback to be received in addition to formal peer review and establish priority.
Wiley believes journals should allow authors to submit manuscripts which they have already made available as a preprint (although this does not guarantee that the 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). In those cases where the preprint has been reviewed by a third-party platform, they will still be subject to formal peer review as part of our normal journal workflow.
Authors should not assign or license their 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).
If the preprint server enables updates, we encourage authors to upload revised versions of their preprint to the preprint server up until the formally peer-reviewed article is accepted by a journal. Once the article is accepted by a journal, the preprint should formally link to the journal version of record, following an embargo period for articles not published as open access. See our self-archiving policy here.
Wiley encourages researchers to cite preprints (just like other peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources), making it clear that the citation is to a preprint for example (from guidelines provided by the National Library of Medicine):
Bar DZ, Atkatsh K, Tavarez U, Erdos MR, Gruenbaum Y, Collins FS. Biotinylation by antibody recognition- A novel method for proximity labeling. BioRxiv 069187 [Preprint]. August 11, 2016 [cited 2017 Jan 12]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1101/069187.
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).”
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.