Preprint
Definition
A preprint is the manuscript itself, finished enough to be read and argued with, posted publicly rather than held back until a journal accepts it. In physics, mathematics and increasingly in biology and economics this is routine: the preprint appears first, the journal version follows months or years later, and both continue to exist. The established route is a preprint server — arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN and their peers — which issues an identifier, keeps a version history and is what funders and reviewers expect to see. Hosting your own author copy complements that rather than replacing it: a file linked from your CV and your department page, reaching readers who arrive from a talk or a search rather than from the server. The two copies should point at each other.
Why It Matters
A preprint gets cited, which means its address has to outlive the reason you posted it. If a citation resolves to nothing three years later, the paper is effectively gone for anyone following the reference, and nobody tells you. That is why the identifier from a preprint server counts for more than any URL you control, and why a copy on your own site should be a permalink you intend to maintain rather than a file in a folder you will one day tidy. There is a duplication problem too: once the journal version exists, two full texts are in circulation and a search engine has to decide which one is the real page.
How It Works
Post to the appropriate server first and let it assign the identifier, because that is the citable address. Then put the author copy at a stable path of your own, served as application/pdf so it opens in the browser, and state on the page which version it is — submitted, accepted manuscript or published — with a date. Set the canonical URL of your copy to the version of record once one exists, so a search engine credits a single page instead of splitting the signal across two. Check the journal's policy before posting anything, since many permit the submitted manuscript but not the publisher's typeset file. Keep earlier versions reachable rather than overwriting them, because a reader following an old citation needs to see what was actually cited.
Real-World Example
An economist posts a working paper to a preprint server and keeps an author copy at r-halloran-wp-2026.99helpers.site, which is the link on her seminar slides and in her email signature. Each page links to the other. When the paper is accepted eighteen months later she replaces the file with the accepted manuscript, leaves the earlier version reachable at its own path, and adds one line at the top giving the journal and the DOI. No citation anyone made has broken.
Common Mistakes
- ✕Citing the copy on your own site as the version of record — the preprint server's identifier is what survives you changing institution
- ✕Overwriting the file when a revision appears — anyone who cited the earlier text now has a reference to something that no longer exists
- ✕Uploading the publisher's typeset PDF without checking — many journals allow the manuscript and specifically not that file
Related Terms
Research Poster
A research poster is the large single-sheet summary of a study presented at a conference, usually A0 and produced as one PDF. Published online, it becomes a link people can open after the session instead of photographing your board.
Online CV
An online CV is a full curriculum vitae published at a web address — the long document version, with publications, teaching, grants and talks, rather than a one-page summary. It is normally kept alongside a downloadable PDF of the same content.
Permalink
A permalink is an address meant never to change, so that everything pointing at it keeps working. The permanence is a promise from whoever owns the address, not a property of the web.
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is the one address you nominate as the real home of a piece of content when several addresses serve it. You declare it with a rel=canonical link in the page head, and search engines use it to decide which version to index.
PDF Hosting
Publishing a .pdf at a web address so it opens in the reader's browser rather than landing in their downloads folder. The header the host sends decides which of those happens.
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