Preprints and Prior Dissemination

Authors must tell IJCI if the submitted work has been posted on a preprint server before submission or if a preprint is posted while the manuscript is under consideration. The disclosure should identify the preprint server and provide the persistent URL and DOI or other identifier when one exists.

Authors should also disclose conference abstracts, posters, oral presentations, proceedings, or other prior dissemination that could overlap materially with the manuscript. A conference abstract or presentation is generally not treated as prior full publication; a full proceedings article or substantially overlapping published report may require separate editorial assessment.

Authors should use established archives that clearly label material as not peer reviewed, preserve withdrawal/version metadata, support disclosure of funding and competing interests, and provide a mechanism to link the preprint to a later peer-reviewed publication.

IJCI uses double-blind peer review. A publicly available preprint can make author identity discoverable, so complete anonymity cannot be guaranteed when a preprint exists. Reviewers and editors should not intentionally search for author identity solely to defeat the journal's blinded review process.

Reviewer reports, confidential editorial correspondence, and interim manuscript versions that incorporate confidential journal feedback should not be posted publicly during peer review.

After publication, authors should update the preprint record so readers are directed to the final IJCI Version of Record. The peer-reviewed IJCI article is the authoritative journal version. Reuse and distribution of the published article are governed by the licence stated on the Version of Record.

References to preprints must clearly identify them as preprints and should include the persistent URL and DOI when available. If the work has subsequently been published in a peer-reviewed journal, authors should ordinarily cite the peer-reviewed publication rather than the earlier preprint. Clinical claims based primarily on non-peer-reviewed material should be presented with appropriate caution.

Posting a clinical-trial manuscript as a preprint does not replace prospective trial registration or any other registration requirement applicable to the study. Trial-registration information must still be supplied in accordance with IJCI's clinical-trial policy.

Material already published as a full peer-reviewed article is not treated as a preprint. Substantially duplicate publication is not acceptable unless a legitimate secondary-publication arrangement has been disclosed and approved with the necessary permissions and transparent citation of the primary publication.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that any licence or terms attached to a preprint do not prevent them from granting IJCI the rights needed to publish the accepted article under the journal's stated open-access licence.