During the publishing process several versions of an article are formed.
You can find all these different versions of articles in different repositories, databases or archives.
The following table contains the various names of article versions that publishers use at different stages of the publication process.
Figure: Public Domain
| Manuscript submitted to journal | Author's final version of an article |
Article published in a journal |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Terms | Pre-print, submitted version, author-submitted article | Post-print, final draft, accepted author manuscript, accepted article, author's accepted manuscript |
Final published article, final published version, version of record, definitive version, publisher PDF, publisher's version, ahead of print, in press, corrected proof, online first, epub, forthcoming article. |
| Definition | Not peer reviewed, author's first article manuscript version sent to a journal | The author's final version of an article that has been modified according to the feedback of the peer review, does not have the layout or logos of the publisher | Final version of the article that has layout, pagination, logo etc. finalized by the publisher |
Open Access repositories can be either institutional e.g Trepo or subject-based e.g. arXiv, RePec. Institutional repositories provide access to institutional research output and articles produced by the members of an institution or an university. Subject-based repositores focus on articles and other research outputs published in a specific discipline. You can find more repositories from these services:
Repositories
What are preprint repositories
Preprint repositories contain scientific articles that haven't been peer reviewed yet. The repositories can be either subject based or multidisciplinary. They may also contain other additional material such as data associated with an article.
Many publishers and funders have also launched their own preprint repositories (e.g. F1000 Research, Gates Open Research, Lancet, MDPI, Peer J, Springer Natue, Wellcome and Wiley).
