Preprints are versions of academic papers made freely available before independent peer review, and can speed up and broaden access to research outputs.
Preprints are versions of academic papers made freely available before independent peer review by a journal.
While they should be read with an especially careful and critical eye, they present a great opportunity for researchers to speed up and broaden access to their research outputs. However, researchers may be concerned that publishing a preprint will count as “prior publication”, making it hard or impossible to publish in the journal of their choice.
As part of our work promoting transparency in energy demand research, we read the author guidelines of the 20 journals in which CREDS outputs were most frequently published to check their position on preprints. The results are summarised in the table below (plus see a Google Doc with more detail and that we will seek to keep up to date). As you can see, some journals even have an in-built preprint submission tool whereby you can submit a preprint as part of the manuscript submission process. We hope this brief resource makes it easier for energy demand researchers to choose whether or not to share preprints of their papers.
| Journal title | Date checked | Accepts preprints? | Includes built-in simultaneous preprint submission? | Link to statement of preprint policy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Energy Policy | 13/01/2022 | Yes | Yes | Energy Policy: Guide for authors |
| Buildings and Cities | 20/01/2022 | Yes | No | Buildings & Cities: Preprint policy |
| Energy Research & Social Science | 20/01/2022 | No | No | Energy Research & Social Science: Guide for authors |
| Environmental Research Letters | 20/01/2022 | Yes | No | IOP Science: Preprint policy |
| Proceedings of the eceee Summer Study on energy efficiency | 20/01/2022 | Yes | No | No link, but advice from ECEEE: “A pre-print is a publication, which has not yet undergone the peer review process and is not published in a classical format. So technically, you (and probably even eceee) could publish the non-peer reviewed version of the paper on your website or in any other repository but it needs to be clearly marked as a pre-print and needs to be distinguished from the peer-reviewed, typeset and formally published paper. The paper currently in our process (reviewed and currently undergoing typesetting and formatting) cannot be published as pre-print. For that peer-reviewed version you will have to wait until the proceedings are published.” |
| Building Services Engineering Research and Technology | 20/01/2022 | No | No | |
| Energies | 14/01/2022 | Yes | No (but publisher also operates preprint server) | Energies: Preprint and conference papers |
| Global Environmental Change | 14/01/2022 | Yes | Yes | Global Environmental Change: Guide for authors |
| Applied Energy | 14/01/2022 | Yes | No | Applied Energy: Guide for authors |
| Journal of Cleaner Production | 14/01/2022 | Yes | No | Journal of Cleaner Production: Guide for authors |
| Nature Energy | 14/01/2022 | Yes | Yes | Nature Energy: Preprint and conference proceedings |
| Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 14/01/2022 | Yes | Yes | Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews: Guide for authors |
| Annual Review of Environment and Resources | 09/05/2022 | Yes (but specific guidance) | No | Annual Review of Environment and Resources: Instructions for the preparation of manuscripts, pdf |
| Ecological Economics | 09/05/2022 | Yes | Yes | Ecological Economics: Guide for authors |
| Energy and Buildings | 14/01/2022 | Yes | No | Energy & Buildings: Guide for authors |
| Energy Efficiency | ||||
| Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions | 09/05/2022 | Yes | Yes | Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions: Guide for authors |
| Joule | 14/01/2022 | Yes (but only for the presubmission manuscript) | No | Joule: Information for authors |
| Transportation Research Part D | 14/01/2022 | Yes | Yes | Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment: Guide for authors |
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