PsyArXiv is psychology's dedicated open-access preprint server. It opened in September 2016 (official launch December 2016) and marked its 10th anniversary in August 2026 with more than 58,000 preprints published. It is community-run: the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) governs the service through the PsyArXiv Scientific Advisory Board, while the Center for Open Science (COS) provides the technical infrastructure via the Open Science Framework (OSF). Posting and reading are completely free - costs are covered by contributions from member institution libraries rather than author fees.

A preprint on PsyArXiv is a citable, DOI-bearing scholarly record, but it is not a peer-reviewed publication. This guide covers how posting works, what moderation does and does not check, licensing choices, citation practice, and how PsyArXiv fits into the journal-submission workflow.

PsyArXiv accepts scholarly manuscripts across psychology and the behavioral sciences: empirical papers, reviews, meta-analyses, registered report protocols, case studies, opinion pieces, and postprints (author-accepted manuscripts, where the journal's self-archiving policy allows). Content must be within scope and scholarly in nature. Since March 2026, moderators also use authors' publication records to establish scholarly expertise for formats such as reviews, case studies, and opinion pieces, in response to rapidly rising submission volume.

1. Create a free OSF account and start a new submission at osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv.
2. Upload your manuscript (PDF is standard) and enter metadata: title, abstract, authors, subject tags, and any links to data, code, or materials.
3. Choose a license - CC0 1.0 or CC BY 4.0. No license is applied by default; you can add one before or after posting.
4. Submit for moderation. Since 19 August 2025, PsyArXiv uses pre-moderation: your preprint stays private until a volunteer moderator approves it, typically within 24-72 hours.
5. Receive a DOI. Every approved preprint gets a DOI (prefix 10.31234). Since April 2025, PsyArXiv supports DOI versioning, so individual versions are separately resolvable.
6. Update anytime. You can post revised versions - readers always see the version history. When the paper is published, add the journal DOI to the preprint metadata so readers are pointed to the version of record.

Moderation is a threshold check, not peer review. Treat PsyArXiv preprints as un-refereed scholarship: valuable for early access and feedback, but not validated findings.

PsyArXiv offers two Creative Commons options, both author-selected:

By default a newly uploaded work carries no license (standard copyright applies); adding one is recommended so reuse terms are clear. Authors retain copyright in all cases - posting on PsyArXiv is a nonexclusive act.

APA (7th edition) format:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the preprint. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xxxxx

Use the preprint's own DOI, keep "PsyArXiv" in plain text as the repository name, and omit volume, issue, and page numbers. If a journal version now exists, cite the published article instead unless you specifically read the preprint.

PsyArXiv is not intended to replace journals, and posting there is compatible with most psychology journals: the large majority of publishers (APA, SAGE, Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, and others) allow submission of manuscripts previously posted as preprints. A small number of journals still consider preprints "prior publication", so check the target journal's preprint policy before posting. After acceptance, you can usually update the PsyArXiv record with the published DOI, and many journals also allow posting the accepted manuscript (postprint) subject to their self-archiving terms.

Withdrawal is deliberately rare: preprints are part of the scholarly record, and PsyArXiv removes papers only where it has a legal obligation (for example, private information or copyright claims). Post a corrected version rather than expecting deletion.

There are no submission fees, no reading fees, and no APCs - the cost to authors is $0. PsyArXiv is sustained by contributions from member institution libraries and by SIPS volunteer labor, with COS providing OSF infrastructure. Note that COS's phase-out of OSF Projects (announced 2026) does not affect posting preprints on PsyArXiv, although linking an OSF Project to a preprint will eventually be retired; data, code, and materials hosted elsewhere can still be linked.