Publication Guide
Research Square is a free, multidisciplinary preprint platform based in Durham, North Carolina. Launched in 2018, it hosts more than 220,000 preprints across the physical sciences, biomedicine, engineering, and the social sciences, and it is one of the largest multidisciplinary preprint servers in the world. Its defining feature is In Review - a journal-integrated preprint service, launched with Springer Nature in October 2018, that posts your manuscript as a public preprint while it is under peer review at a participating journal and shows the review's progress on a live timeline.
Ownership matters for context: Springer Nature invested in the company's predecessor American Journal Experts (AJE) in 2016, became a majority owner in 2020, and completed its full acquisition of Research Square Company on 1 December 2022. Research Square is therefore a Springer Nature platform, operated alongside the AJE author-services brand.
What Research Square is (and is not)
Research Square is a preprint server, not a journal or a journal publisher. Posting there:
- makes your manuscript publicly readable within days, with a citable DOI;
- establishes priority - the preprint is a timestamped, permanent part of the scholarly record;
- does not constitute peer-reviewed publication, and preprints must not be cited as if they were.
Every preprint is screened by an in-house moderation team before posting - checks for scope, plagiarism, ethics statements, and obviously unscientific content - but there is no peer review on the platform itself.
How posting works
There are two routes onto the platform:
| Route | How it works | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Direct submission | Upload your manuscript at researchsquare.com; it is screened by moderators and posted with a DOI, typically within a few days. | $0 |
| In Review | When submitting to a participating Springer Nature journal (700+ titles across BMC, Springer, and select Nature imprints), opt in during submission; the journal deposits your manuscript on Research Square automatically. | $0 |
Either way, posting is free. Preprints are versioned: you can upload revisions, and every version remains accessible with its own DOI suffix.
In Review - the journal-integrated route
In Review is what most authors encounter Research Square through. If you opt in while submitting to a participating journal, you get:
- a public, citable preprint with a DOI, live early in the review process;
- a private dashboard with real-time peer-review status (reviewers invited, reports received, decision made);
- open community commenting on the preprint via the Hypothes.is annotation tool.
Important: the preprint remains publicly available on Research Square whether the journal accepts or rejects the manuscript. If the paper is published, the preprint page links forward to the version of record. Opting in is optional and free, and it does not affect the journal's editorial decision.
Screening and moderation
Research Square moderators check submissions before posting for: plagiarism and text overlap; ethical-approval and consent statements for human and animal research; dual-use and biosecurity concerns; and basic scientific plausibility. Manuscripts can be declined at this stage, but passing moderation is not an endorsement of the findings. There is no formal peer review on the platform.
Citing a Research Square preprint
Cite preprints as preprints, with the DOI and a label such as "Preprint (Version 1), Research Square". A typical author-year citation looks like:
Author, A. Title of the preprint. Research Square [preprint], 2026. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-XXXXXX/v1
Most style guides (APA, Vancouver, Chicago) now have explicit preprint formats - SciSpace's citation generator supports them. Always check whether a peer-reviewed version has since been published and cite that instead where possible.
How it relates to journal submission
Posting on Research Square does not usually count as prior publication: the vast majority of journals - including all Springer Nature titles - allow submission of manuscripts already posted as preprints. A small number of journals (mainly in medicine and chemistry) still restrict preprints, so check the target journal's preprint policy first. Note that a preprint cannot be withdrawn once posted; it can only be updated or, in rare cases, flagged with a withdrawal notice that keeps the record visible.
Cost and licensing
Posting is free - there are no submission charges, APCs, or reader fees. Preprints are posted under a CC BY license, meaning anyone may reuse the content with attribution. Because there are no fees, waiver programs and transformative agreements do not apply.
Legitimacy and good practice
Research Square is a legitimate, widely used platform: it is owned by Springer Nature, its preprints carry Crossref DOIs and are indexed by Google Scholar, Europe PMC (for biomedical content), and Dimensions, and its In Review service is embedded in the workflows of hundreds of established journals. The standard caveats of all preprint servers apply - content is not peer reviewed, so findings should be treated as preliminary, and media or clinical decisions should not rest on a preprint alone.
