Articles submitted to Deep Science are not peer-reviewed, edited, or typeset before being posted online.

An independent Managing Editor (ME) will liaise with the authors to run a high-quality, in-depth peer-review process. The system will recommend 10 different but closely relevant experts for the author. The author will also suggest 2-3 preferred reviewers. ME will choose 2 of them to review the paper. All the review reports will be open to public.

ME will only invite referees, but not assess the manuscript for the scientific journals. Reviewers may co-review manuscripts with colleagues, eg members of their research groups.

No. Deep Science will only review well-developed scholarly research papers that represent a significant advance for the field and provides value to a specific community. A ME in conjunction with an academic advisory board makes this decision independently.

All articles are screened on submission for offensive, dangerous, and/or non-scientific content and are checked for plagiarism.

No. Deep Science is initially free. After this first experimental phase, a financial model will be developed for long-term suistainability of the platform.

Preprints usually appear on Deep Science within 24 hours.

Peer-review is usually done after journal submission. Deep Science will run the peer review process before journal submission and reviewers will be asked to provide an expert assessment of the rigor of the research and of the advance the study represents for the field.

Reviewers will be asked to focus on the science rather than fit for a journal. It will, therefore, improve the objectivity of the assessment and make reviews more portable for assessment by target journals with one set of referee comments. Thus, Deep Science will contribute to reducing the number of re-submission and re-review cycles.

No. If you feel the reviews are not adequate, you can submit your manuscript directly to any journal, which will then treat the manuscript as a new submission.

Yes. The submission form will provide the opportunity to propose reviewers or to exclude them due to a competitive situation or conflict of interest.

After screening the review reports, the Deep Science Managing Editor will make the review reports go public.

By default, Deep Science will only show the referees’ surname and his/her research areas. The full identity of the referees will not be communicated to the authors, unless a reviewer explicitly decides to sign her/his report, which they are welcome to do.

After review reports go public, authors will have a chance to upload a response to the reviewers and initial revision plan to Deep Science. The Authors’ responses will be posted alongside the referee reports on the Deep Science.

Deep Science is not a journal so it has no Impact Factor.

Most basic research journals will consider manuscripts that were posted on Deep Science and other preprint servers prior to submission. Authors should consult these lists and other sources of information before posting on Deep Science.

Deep Science is for the distribution of preprints, which are complete but unpublished manuscripts. Research articles reporting new, confirmatory, or contradictory findings may be posted. Individual components of research articles such as figures, tables, and data sets are not appropriate for posting to Deep Science. In the Scientific Communication and Education subject category, research articles on professional standards may be posted. Deep Science does not permit the posting of news, product advertisements, announcements, teaching/instructive materials, meeting reports, white papers, policy statements, human or veterinary case reports, theses, dissertations, student projects, recipes and simple protocols.

No, Deep Science is intended for rapid sharing of new research results, defined as experimental, mathematical, or computational work. Manuscripts that solely summarize existing knowledge or present narrative theories are inappropriate, as are term papers, book excerpts, and undergraduate dissertations.

Research articles summarizing new experimental or computational methods are appropriate and may include step-by-step protocols. Step-by-step protocols alone are not sufficient and must be placed in the context of a complete research article that includes elements such as introduction, results, and discussion.

Deep Science welcomes computational papers. These should be full research papers and include methodological details and results. Simple sequence alignments and results of facile database searches are generally not sufficient, nor are software announcements that do not include detailed methods and research data produced by their output/application.

Only articles submitted in English can be posted on Deep Science.

Authors retain copyright of their articles and choose from a number of license type options.

Databases that are members of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Consortium (DDBJ, ENA, and GenBank/SRA) release sequences once a manuscript posts on a preprint server. For other databases, authors should check the policy of the database concerned.

The licensing terms selected by the author determine the parameters for reuse. The copyright holder and licensing information for each article are displayed on the right of the Abstract.

Authors may submit a single PDF file to Deep Science. Supplemental files are also allowed to be submitted in a wide range of file formats.

Each version of a manuscript is available in PDF format.

Deep Science does not post articles that include images or information that could identify a patient. As a preprint server, we cannot verify whether consent has been obtained. In order to protect confidentiality, we will decline manuscripts containing images that may identify a patient or research participant. Therefore, we request authors remove all figure elements containing photographs in which an individual's face or other identifying features are present prior to submission. Please note obscuring, blurring, covering, or pixelation of the faces is not sufficient for posting on Deep Science.

An article must be submitted to Deep Science before it is accepted by a journal. If an article has been submitted to a journal but not yet been accepted for publication, it can be submitted to Deep Science.

We recommend that a preprint is posted on only one server. Deep Science provides metrics for article views, PDF downloads, and attention scores. Authors will find these metrics are underestimated in article-to-article comparisons if a manuscript appears on more than one server. In addition, readers may be frustrated by encountering the same preprint in more than one location. Posting to both Deep Science and other preprint servers is not permitted and will result in article withdrawal.

No. Manuscripts posted on Deep Science receive DOI's and thus are citable and part of the scientific record. They are indexed by services such as Google Scholar and Crossref, creating a permanent digital presence independent of Deep Science records. Consequently, Deep Science's policy is that papers cannot be removed. Authors may, however, have their article marked as "Withdrawn" if they no longer stand by their findings/conclusions or acknowledge fundamental errors in the article. In these cases, a statement explaining the reason for the withdrawal is posted on the Deep Science article page to which the DOI defaults; the original article is still accessible via the article history tab. In extremely rare, exceptional cases, papers must be removed because of a copyright breach or inclusion of information deemed dangerous.

An article posted on Deep Science can be revised at any time, until it is accepted for publication. Note, however, that some journals request that authors do not post versions that include changes made in response to the journal's reviewers’ comments.

To submit a revised version of an article, select “Submit a revision” within the Author area. The revision will be posted under a new DOI and the original version of the manuscript will remain accessible in the Info/History tab on the article page.

To correct errors in your article or Supplementary file, please submit a revised version of your article.

Yes. You can choose multiple subject area for an article on Deep Science.

Deep Science will usually automatically add a link to the published version within approximately two (2) weeks of journal publication. The corresponding author should receive an email from Deep Science requesting confirmation of the link. On rare occasions a match is not made because the title or authors have changed or due to other contingencies. Please wait 2-3 weeks before contacting Deep Science staff should the link not appear.

Metrics can be found on each preprint's Metrics tab. Article usage based on Abstract and PDF views is updated daily. In addition, Altmetrics are provided that track attention to the article in blogs, tweets, news reports, and other media.

You can comment below the Abstract area of each version of an article. We welcome on-topic comments, which are moderated to filter content that is offensive or not relevant, a process that can take up to 24 hours (please submit your comment once only). Comments must be in English. Comments that are offensive, not pertinent, or question the character, abilities, or motivation of authors will be excluded, without explanation.

Preprints deposited in Deep Science should be cited using their digital object identifier (DOI).

Example: Author AN, Author BT. 2013. My article title. Deep Science doi: 10.1101/2019.12.11.123456

Deep Science preprints are indexed by Crossref. They are not indexed by Web of Science.

Yes, all Deep Science papers are archived at Portico.