Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A cognitive psychology lab posts a working paper on PsyArXiv ahead of journal submission so collaborators and the field can cite and comment on it via its DOI while formal peer review is still underway elsewhere.
- Is an instance
A research team deposits a registered report's Stage 1 protocol on PsyArXiv as part of an open-science workflow, alongside data and materials hosted in a linked OSF project.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Describing a PsyArXiv preprint as "peer reviewed" based on its presence on the server — pre-moderation screens for scope and completeness, not for methodological or scientific rigor.
- Not an instance
Treating a preprint that was later formally published in a journal as unchanged from its PsyArXiv version — journal peer review frequently produces revisions between the two.
Editorial commentary
If you arrived here looking for a PsyArXiv login page, there isn’t one. PsyArXiv has no account system of its own. It is a service running on the Open Science Framework (OSF), so you sign in with an OSF account at osf.io and reach the server at osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv. The same credentials cover your OSF projects, registrations, files and any other OSF-hosted preprint service, and there is no separate PsyArXiv password to reset. The blog at blog.psyarxiv.com is where policy announcements are published; it is not the submission interface.
What changed in 2025 and 2026, and what it means for your submission
The most consequential recent change for authors is the moderation switch. PsyArXiv moved from post-moderation to pre-moderation on 19 August 2025. Before that date a deposit went public the moment it was uploaded; since then a volunteer moderator has to approve it first, so there is now a queue between “submitted” and “publicly citable”. SIPS has described the change as a response to low-quality and AI-generated material accumulating on the server, and has been explicit that pre-moderation costs a substantial amount of volunteer time.
The moderation policy was revised again in March 2026. The revision added a check that the submitting author has complied with the service’s terms of service, and allowed moderators to weigh an author’s past publication record when judging scholarly expertise for non-empirical formats such as reviews, critiques, commentaries, case studies and opinion pieces. In practice that means an empirical report from an unknown author is treated differently from a sweeping review from an author with no publication history in the area.
None of this is peer review, and the operational definition above is deliberate on that point. Moderation is a threshold check on scope, scholarliness and internal consistency. It does not assess whether a design is sound, an analysis is correct, or the conclusions follow from the data.
The scope is wider than the word “preprint” suggests
PsyArXiv’s stated scope covers author versions of preprints and postprints of original qualitative and quantitative research reports, Stage 1 and Stage 2 registered reports, books, book chapters, reviews, critiques, posters and research commentaries. That makes it usable as a subject repository for an accepted author manuscript, which is a green open access deposit route, as well as a place to post work before submission. Whether a given deposit satisfies a funder or institutional open access mandate depends on that policy’s requirements for version, licence and embargo, none of which PsyArXiv sets on the funder’s behalf.
Citing a PsyArXiv deposit without misrepresenting it
Every accepted deposit gets its own DOI, which is what makes a PsyArXiv preprint citable in its own right rather than as grey literature. Two habits keep that citation honest. First, cite the specific version you read, because authors can post revisions and the DOI resolves to the deposit rather than to a frozen snapshot of the text you actually used. Second, if the work has since appeared in a journal, cite the version of record rather than the preprint, or cite both and say which claim came from which; peer review routinely changes results sections and abstracts between the two.
Withdrawal is narrower than most authors expect
PsyArXiv states that an accepted deposit can be withdrawn only where there is a legal obligation to do so. A withdrawal does not delete the record: the deposit is replaced by a tombstone page that preserves the original metadata and the reason for withdrawal and locks the item against further modification, following the pattern described under DOI tombstone. Authors who treat a preprint server as a scratch space they can clear later are working from the wrong model. Post when you would be content for the deposit to be a permanent part of your public record.
Scale, funding and sibling servers
SIPS reported in 2026 that PsyArXiv hosts close to 50,000 preprints, white papers and other manuscripts. That figure is as reported by SIPS and was not independently counted by CASRAI; treat it as an order-of-magnitude indication rather than a citable statistic. There are no author-facing or reader-facing charges: costs are covered by contributions from member institution libraries, which is why the service carries no article processing charge of any kind. PsyArXiv sits alongside other discipline-specific servers on the same OSF infrastructure, including SocArXiv for the social sciences, and the general behaviour of that infrastructure is described under OSF Preprints.
Related terms
- Preprint – the general object class this server holds.
- OSF Preprints – the hosting infrastructure PsyArXiv runs on.
- Open Science Framework (OSF) – the platform supplying the account you log in with.
- SocArXiv – the sibling social-science server on the same infrastructure.
- Version of record – what a preprint is not.
- Green open access – the deposit route a PsyArXiv postprint can satisfy.
Sources checked 8 August 2026: the PsyArXiv service on OSF (osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv) and the PsyArXiv blog’s About and moderation-policy pages (blog.psyarxiv.com), which carry the 19 August 2025 pre-moderation date and the March 2026 policy revision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a separate PsyArXiv account to log in?
No. PsyArXiv has no account system of its own; it runs on the Open Science Framework, so you sign in with an OSF account at osf.io and reach the server at osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv. The same OSF credentials work for your other OSF projects and preprint services, and there is no separate PsyArXiv password to reset.
Is PsyArXiv part of OSF?
Yes. PsyArXiv is a discipline-specific preprint service running on OSF’s infrastructure, alongside sibling servers such as SocArXiv for the social sciences. The general behaviour of that shared infrastructure is described under OSF Preprints.
Is a PsyArXiv preprint peer reviewed?
No. Posting on PsyArXiv is not peer review. Since 19 August 2025 deposits go through pre-moderation, a threshold check on scope, scholarliness and internal consistency carried out by a volunteer moderator, but that check does not assess whether a study’s design is sound, its analysis is correct, or its conclusions follow from the data.
Does it cost anything to post on PsyArXiv?
No. PsyArXiv carries no article processing charge and there are no author-facing or reader-facing fees. Costs are covered by contributions from member institution libraries.
Can a PsyArXiv preprint be withdrawn?
Only in narrow circumstances: PsyArXiv states that an accepted deposit can be withdrawn only where there is a legal obligation to do so. A withdrawal does not delete the record; the deposit is replaced by a tombstone page that preserves the original metadata and the reason for withdrawal.
How should I cite a PsyArXiv preprint that was later published in a journal?
Cite the specific version you used, since authors can post revisions and the DOI resolves to the deposit rather than a frozen snapshot of the text you actually used. If the work has since appeared in a journal, cite the version of record instead, or cite both and state which claim came from which, since peer review often changes results and abstracts between the two.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-term="PsyArXiv"
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"description": "<p><strong>PsyArXiv</strong> is a free, open-access preprint repository for psychology and related behavioral-science research. It was created by the <a href='https://improvingpsych.org/'>Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS)</a> and is hosted on the Open Science Framework (OSF), the infrastructure built and maintained by the <a href='https://www.cos.io/'>Center for Open Science (COS)</a>. A PsyArXiv Scientific Advisory Board oversees policy, and the service is funded by contributions from member institution libraries rather than author or reader fees.</p><p>Authors upload working papers, preprints, registered reports, and author copies of accepted journal articles covering any area of psychology — clinical, cognitive, developmental, social, and beyond — without going through the peer review a journal would require before an editor even sees the manuscript. Accepted submissions receive a persistent <a href='/dictionary/term/doi'>DOI</a>, making the preprint citable on its own before, or independent of, eventual journal publication.</p><h2>Operational definition</h2><p>A deposit is properly identified as a "PsyArXiv preprint" if it meets all of the following:</p><ul><li>It was submitted through the PsyArXiv service on OSF (osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv), not simply cross-listed or mirrored from another preprint server.</li><li>It falls within psychology or a closely related behavioral/social-science discipline, per PsyArXiv's scope.</li><li>Since PsyArXiv moved from post-moderation to <strong>pre-moderation in August 2025</strong>, it has passed moderator screening confirming the work is scholarly, psychology-focused, and internally consistent (matching author names, titles, and abstracts across the uploaded documents) — moderators do not evaluate scientific merit or methodology, only these threshold, non-substantive criteria.</li><li>It has not been withdrawn; a withdrawn preprint is replaced by a "tombstone" page that preserves the metadata and DOI but removes the full text.</li></ul><h2>What PsyArXiv is not</h2><p>PsyArXiv posting is explicitly not peer review. A preprint deposited there has not been evaluated by independent subject-matter reviewers the way a journal submission is — pre-moderation checks scope and completeness, not scientific validity. It is also distinct from a journal's own author-manuscript archive: PsyArXiv is a standalone, discipline-specific repository within OSF's family of subject-area preprint servers (alongside services such as SocArXiv for sociology and EdArXiv for education), not a publisher.</p><h2>Examples</h2><ul><li>A cognitive psychology lab posts a working paper on PsyArXiv ahead of journal submission so collaborators and the field can cite and comment on it via its DOI while formal peer review is still underway elsewhere.</li><li>A research team deposits a registered report's Stage 1 protocol on PsyArXiv as part of an open-science workflow, alongside data and materials hosted in a linked OSF project.</li></ul><h2>Counter-examples</h2><ul><li>Describing a PsyArXiv preprint as "peer reviewed" based on its presence on the server — pre-moderation screens for scope and completeness, not for methodological or scientific rigor, which only happens if and when the manuscript goes through a journal's own review process.</li><li>Treating a preprint that was later formally published in a journal as unchanged from its PsyArXiv version — journal peer review frequently produces revisions between the preprint and the version of record, so the two should not be cited interchangeably without checking which version is being referenced.</li></ul>",
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