Share your preprint and track your manuscript’s review progress with our In Review service

Our commitment to early sharing and transparency in peer review inspires us to think about how to help our authors in new ways. So, in October 2018, we added a new option for you when you submit to select Springer Nature journals. This first-of-its-kind option, called In Review, brought to you by our partners at Research Square, makes it easy to share a preprint of your manuscript on the Research Square platform and gives you real time updates on your manuscript’s progress through peer review. In Review clearly links your manuscript to the journal reviewing it, while it’s in review.

How can you participate?

It's simple! Just select the In Review option when you submit your next article to one of the participating journals. (But be sure all your coauthors agree to opt-in, too.) And here is a list of journals currently on In Review.

Learn more about In Review

Brought to you by Research Square

With In Review you can:

Share your work early with funders and others as a preprint on Research Square in a citeable way while it is under review, and engage the wider community in discussion to help make your article even better including through the Hypothes.is open annotation tool. And social sharing of your preprint is easy—every article page has social media buttons at the top
Track the status of your manuscript, including when reviews have been received (see below for details)
Benefit from early sharing, such as more collaboration opportunities and earlier citations

Your peers will be able to:

Comment on/see emerging science in full HTML—in both phone and desktop-friendly sizes
Find new discoveries with fully-indexed search
Gain insight into the peer review pipeline at participating journals

What can you expect if you opt in?

The editorial and peer review process will continue through the peer review systems as usual. You can use In Review to access up-to-date information on where your article is in the peer review process.

The system will also immediately post a preprint of your manuscript to the In Review section of Research Square, in easy-to-read HTML, and with a citeable DOI. There, it will become a permanent part of the scholarly record—that means that your manuscript will permanently remain publicly available, regardless of whether the journal you submitted it to accepts it or not. (The FAQ has more details about the mechanics of how this works.)

You can see an example in the article above.

What happens when you opt in to In Review?

1. Opt in

When you submit your article through the manuscript submission system you will get the chance to opt in to In Review. All coauthors must agree to post a preprint and participate in In Review.

2. Quality control checks

If you choose to opt in, your article will undergo some basic quality control checks before being sent to the In Review platform.

3. Preprint deposition

Research Square converts the manuscript to HTML, assigns a DOI, and posts on the platform with a CC-BY license. This is public, and permanent.

4. Author notification

Research Square notifies authors of preprint posting, and sends a link to the author dashboard. Authors will need to create an account (i.e., password) before logging in to see the dashboard.

5. Author dashboard (private)

Authors will get real time updates on their manuscript’s progress through peer review in the private author dashboard.

6. Peer review timeline

Updates appear on the public peer review timeline as the manuscript progresses through peer review* (*Not available on Nature-branded journals.)

7. Final Decision

If the article is published, the preprint is updated with a link to the version of record. If that article is rejected, the journal name and public peer review timeline will be removed but the preprint and any versions of it, if any, will remain public.

Still have more questions about In Review?

If you still have questions about what In Review can do for you or how it works, read our FAQ.

Find out more about In Review across Springer Nature

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Springer Open

Authors’ original submitted version and all versions are released in real time as peer review progresses
Public peer review timeline
Authors will be able to track peer review on their private author dashboard