Frequently Asked Questions
What is Research Square?
Research Square is a preprint platform that allows you to share your work early, gain feedback and improve your manuscript, and discover emerging science all in one place.
Articles posted to Research Square have not undergone peer review and should not be used to influence medical decisions.
What are the benefits of posting early?
Posting your work early allows you to register your discovery prior to publication in a journal. A DOI timestamps your work and you can start earning citations. Once public, your work can be cited, commented on, and shared by you or others.
Most importantly, posting early means discoveries are shared more quickly, allowing others to build off your work and science to move more quickly. A commentary on the benefits of preprints in the life sciences can be found here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6288/899.
How do I know my work won’t be stolen?
As soon as your DOI is coined, your work is time stamped and becomes a permanent contribution to the scholarly record. Anyone who copies it will be plagiarising and will not be able to legitimately publish the work.
How is Research Square different from other preprints?
Research Square features all the characteristics of a traditional preprint server, but with some notable differences:
- All preprints are displayed in HTML. The full text is indexed and machine-readable so that it is more discoverable by search engines.
- Authors can demonstrate to the community they meet established standards in scientific reporting by purchasing assessments in integrity, reproducibility, and statistical rigor. Badge icons are displayed on their article page for assessments they pass. Learn more about our badges here.
- Video summaries can be added to the article page to communicate your research to a broader audience.
- Readers can comment on a paper using our custom-built commenting system or the hypothes.is annotation tool.
- Figures are rendered using a lightbox that allows for zooming and downloading.
How do I submit?
Click the Submit button, create an account, and then follow the instructions to upload your manuscript and figures. After you submit your paper to Research Square, it will be checked by our editorial staff to ensure it meets our standards for online posting. We'll email you when your paper is posted online and ready to be shared. At that time, you'll receive a DOI and a link to the public version of your article to share with others.
What are Research Square's editorial policies?
Read our full editorial policies here.
What is a DOI and why do I need one?
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a persistent record that your work has been published online and is part of the scholarly record. This means the work can be cited by other researchers in the knowledge that the cited article will be permanently available through the DOI link.
DOIs from Research Square are issued through Crossref, who have a specific DOI structure for preprints. This allows them to be linked to the final published journal article.
Who owns the copyright for preprints?
Research Square preprints are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license, meaning the author retains full copyright for their work. Readers are able to reuse the content under the rules of the CC-BY license.
What types of articles do you accept?
We currently accept the following article types:
- Research Article - a full article of the kind that appears in academic journals. Research Articles usually take the form of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions; however, we accept other formats as well.
- Systematic Review - a formal evaluation of the literature on a particular topic, including clearly defined inclusion/exclusion criteria, an exclusion flowchart and a meta-analysis of available results.
- Method Article - a full description of a new method. A Method Article should include a write-up of the steps taken to validate the method, with results to support this validation.
- Short Report - a brief write up of a single experiment. This often takes the form of a single figure with brief accompanying text to explain how the figure was obtained.
- Case Report - a write-up of an individual clinical presentation. This is usually accompanied by a literature review to place in the context of current clinical understanding.
- Data Note - a single dataset accompanied by a brief write up of how the data were obtained.
We do not accept literature reviews, hypotheses, opinions, theories or commentaries.
Do you have an Impact Factor?
No. Research Square is a preprint server and is therefore not listed in the Web of Science. As such, it does not receive an Impact Factor. Articles can still be cited, however, and citations will be counted by Google Scholar and Crossref.
How do I cite my article once it’s been posted as a preprint?
Whichever reference style you use, the citation should make clear that the paper is a preprint and not yet part of the published literature. We suggest the following format:
AUTHOR. TITLE. DATE, PREPRINT (Version #) available at Research Square DOI.
Example:
Meybohm, P., Lindau, S., Treskatsch, S. et al. Liberal transfusion strategy to prevent mortality and anaemia-associated, ischaemic events in elderly non-cardiac surgical patients – the study design of the LIBERAL-Trial. 20 December 2018, PREPRINT (Version 2) available at Research Square https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.2.55/v2
How do I submit a revised version of my article to Research Square?
To upload a revision, simply log into your account and select 'Edit Submission.'
Why was my article rejected from Research Square?
When an article is submitted, it undergoes a series of checks to ensure it is suitable to be included on the platform. These checks include:
- Is it in scope? Does it fit with one of the article types listed above?
- Does it represent the findings of a scientific study?
- Is it in English and is the language of sufficient quality?
- Does it contain any findings that may pose a risk to health?
- Does it contain any claims that require peer review before being made public?
If we feel your paper does not pass all of these checks, we may decide not to post it, in which case you will receive an email informing you of our decision. Decisions to withhold posting cannot be appealed.
Can I post my paper on another preprint server after posting to Research Square?
When you post to a preprint server you retain full copyright over your article and are free to post it in as many places as you like. However, having more than one version in different places could reduce the usage counts and metrics obtained here and on other sites.
How can I get others to comment on my paper?
Once your paper is posted online, use the share icons in your author dashboard to share on social media or through email. You can reply to comments and engage with the community directly. You can also flag comments you find inappropriate. Read more about how to make the most of your preprint using social media here.
How can I comment on other preprints?
The comments field offers a space for the community to provide transparent feedback to authors about their preprint. Comments can include constructive feedback on the methods, conclusions, statistics, impact, or any other aspect of the work. Comments that are deemed to be inappropriate or promotional in nature may be moderated and removed.
Readers can also comment on specific words, sentences, or sections of the text by simply highlighting the text and selecting “annotate” using the hypothes.is annotation tool.
Will posting on Research Square impact the editor’s decision when I submit to a journal?
Many journals allow and even encourage posting a preprint prior to submission. A list of journal policies can be found on Wikipedia and SHERPA/RoMEO. Consult these lists and your target journal’s editorial policies before submitting your preprint to ensure a smooth path to publication.
What will happen if my paper is ultimately rejected from the journal I submit to?
If your paper is rejected, all information corresponding to the journal will be removed, leaving only the article and any revisions that have been submitted. You are free to send the link to your article to other journals as part of a future submission.
What does it cost to submit my manuscript to Research Square?
It's free!
What is In Review?
Powered by Research Square and developed in partnership with Springer Nature, In Review aims to open up the submission and peer review system to authors and others in the scientific community. The first service of its kind, In Review provides authors with on-demand access to the status of their manuscript and allows them to showcase their work to the wider community for comment while their manuscript is under review.
For more information about In Review including participating journals, see here.
What is Research Square's long term content preservation strategy?
All content on Research Square is permanently archived in Portico, a not-for-profit organization committed to long-term preservation of scholarly material.
I have a concern about one of the preprints on the platform. Who should I contact?
Please contact the editorial office at [email protected].