Tag: news

Updates to PsyArXiv moderation policies

Every preprint submitted to PsyArXiv is viewed by a member of the PsyArXiv moderation team to ensure that PsyArXiv continues to contribute to the integrity of the scientific record. To ensure that we are able to continue delivering the best possible experience for our readers and users in face of a rapidly increasing submission volume, we have adopted the following changes to our moderation policies.

From March 2026, moderators have added additional checks to ensure that authors have complied with all the terms of service for PsyArXiv. Moderators will also use authors’ past publication record to establish scholarly expertise for formats such as reviews, case studies, opinion pieces, etc. or topics where moderators have less experience, such as theories of consciousness, linguistics, philosophy, psychiatry, computational theory, etc. Such formats and topics require more specialist knowledge to establish whether they are in scope as scientific psychology, and what their scholarly contribution represents; hence, submissions cannot be evaluated by moderators in only a few minutes, and we rely on established scholarship to inform decisions. Submissions also need to be complete enough that they represent an independent contribution to the field of psychology, so slide decks and working papers presented as notes or research proposals or with incomplete methods will no longer be accepted into the archive, as they also require more than a few minutes to evaluate. We encourage authors to use OSF projects to record and version work-in-progress. However, PsyArXiv continues to accept stage 1 registered reports, where they pass standard checks for well-crafted registered reports. 

Authors can help by clearly stating their affiliations on the first page; ensuring that all metadata (title, authors and abstract) match the submission exactly; by including a contact e-mail address; adding author notes with ORCIDs and funding information; and for submissions presenting primary or secondary data, details of the institutional review board record at the start also speed up moderation. For student work contributing submissions with primary data, we encourage adding supervisors as co-authors with their permission and adding a CRediT statement. Where authors feel that their submission meets all the criteria but was still rejected, they can appeal moderator decisions, and the moderation supervision team will give the submission further consideration.

Please refer to PsyArXiv’s policies page (https://blog.psyarxiv.com/about-psyarxiv/) and frequently asked questions (https://blog.psyarxiv.com/faq-frequently-asked-questions/) for more information about the moderation process and how to appeal.

We are always looking for volunteers to join the moderation team. If you are interested, please reach out via psyarxiv@improvingpsych.org.

Thank you to everyone contributing to PsyArXiv
– The PsyArXiv team

PsyArXiv Returns to Normal Operations

Thanks to PsyArXiv’s amazing team of 100+ moderators, all preprints meeting PsyArXiv’s requirements have now been approved! Thank you to everyone who volunteered and worked tirelessly over the past 3 weeks to get the situation under control. This was a true community effort, and a testament to the value our community sees in PsyArXiv.

We have now resumed normal operations, which means you can expect any newly posted or edited preprint to be moderated within 24-72 hours of submission. If you post a new preprint (or create a new version of an existing preprint), please be sure to follow the policies to ensure a smooth moderation process.

If your existing preprint is still pending moderation, it is likely that a moderator found an issue which will require an update before it can be approved. The most common issues are a mismatch between the information listed on the paper (e.g., title, author names, author order) and the preprint metadata (the information that is entered into the PsyArXiv system). You can speed up the approval of any preprints with these issues by editing the preprint file and/or preprint metadata to comply with PsyArXiv’s requirements.

PsyArXiv has a new streamlined preprint submission workflow

We’re excited to announce a new workflow for submitting preprints to PsyArXiv. This revision brings a unified submission workflow across the OSF preprint services and hopefully makes it easier for users to submit and edit their preprints.
To get started head over to PsyArXiv and hit “Submit a preprint”.

This takes you to the new submission interface, introduced in more detail in this OSF support article (which also shows how to begin the workflow from the main OSF Preprints page). First, enter your manuscript’s Title and Abstract:

After this, clicking on “Next” (button above) will take you through the rest of the workflow, whose steps are indicated on the left, above.

Please see the OSF support article for a complete walkthrough of the submission workflow. As always, you’ll find a “Contact Us” button over there for any further questions and feedback you might have.

Financial support for PsyArXiv

Center for Open Science have secured a major funding commitment, until the end of 2025, which will support your favourite OSF preprint servers – including PsyArXiv. It’s a big win for keeping the lights on at PsyArXiv, and continuing the mission to bring about a new age for the dissemination and discovery of scholarship in psychological science.

The funding comes from the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC), and since here at PsyArXiv we believe in full and proper credit, let’s list of the “13 sovereign academic libraries” which make up the IPLC partners: Brown University, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, and Yale University.

Heroes!

Here’s a quote from the IPLC Directors which we fully endorse:

As representatives of some of the most well-resourced libraries in the country, we are committed to using our resources to promote public access to all research, not just the research our scholars produce&.Investing in infrastructure and services that are directly aligned with the research mission are critical to laying the foundation for a more open and equitable system of research that will result in better, faster answers to the problems of our time.

Read more in the original news item: 2024-03-18: “Support for OSF Preprint Infrastructure and Community Servers“