Note for 27 November 2025: We are pausing new submissions about AI topics for 90 days. That is, papers about AI models, testing AI models, proposing AI models, theories about the future of AI and so on. We will make exceptions for papers that are already accepted for publication (or already published) in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. And we will make exceptions for empirical social science research about AI in society – for example, a study on how AI use affects workers in an organization – on a case-by-case basis. The purpose of this pause is to make it faster and easier for moderators to reject these papers, and encourage these authors to find other ways of distributing their work. If your empirical social science research paper on an AI topic is rejected and you would like to appeal, please email us a link to the paper at socarxiv@gmail.com with a short note of explanation. We apologize for requiring this step.
Policy revision date October 2025, by the moderation team.
Please be aware that once a paper is accepted, we rarely approve withdrawals. Our withdrawal policy is here. Most importantly, we do not withdraw papers when they are published in a journal, or at the request of journal editors.
Purpose
SocArXiv accepts scholarly work in the social sciences, broadly defined, and some adjacent areas (law and education), that is plausibly categorized and for which authors are correctly identified, and which authors have the legal right to share. We do not verify copyright status or conduct a peer review of research quality. However, as explained below, we reject papers that appear to be fraudulent or to have fraudulent or manipulative intent, or are not minimally informative. The appearance of work is an invitation to the public and scholarly community to share, review, discuss, and evaluate both the written paper and any linked or associated research materials. Acceptance is not a statement about research quality or copyright status. SocArXiv empowers individuals, communities, and institutions to develop their own criteria, announcements, journals, lists, and analyses of scholarly work. Authors sharing papers take full legal, ethical, and scientific responsibility for their work.
SocArXiv is a collective good that depends on the labor of volunteer moderators. People who waste the time of the moderators by submitting fraudulent submissions, spoofs, or AI-produced submissions that lack original content or submissions with the apparent goal of manipulating citation counts will be banned from future submissions.
Policy
SocArXiv accepts papers at any stage of the publication process. We moderate papers before they appear publicly, which is called “pre-moderation” on the Open Science Framework platform. To learn more about how this moderation works on our system, visit this page from our hosts. Subject to volume demands, we expect to post papers submitted for moderation within 3 days.
The SocArXiv moderation process accepts papers that:
1. Are scholarly content. This includes original research, reviews, essays, critiques, pedagogical papers, and comments on other work. Work on SocArXiv is either research or engages with research.
1.1 Are minimally informative. Although we do not do peer review, and do not thoroughly evaluate papers, in the course of review our moderators sometimes determine that a submitted paper does not surpass even a minimal standard of informative value – papers that are extremely short, superficially or poorly written, or to the best of the moderator’s judgment, are not scholarly or academic in nature. Some of these are apparently written by AI machines or spammers, some are simply very low quality. Specifically, papers must (a) at least claim to make an original contribution to knowledge, or (b) offer a critical or informative and original review of previous scholarship. This is meant to exclude generic summaries produced by AI machines, and student coursework that does not go beyond routine discussion or summary of published work, to choose two common examples. We want to exclude mass produced AI papers (often intended to create fictional identities or inflate citation counts) and submissions of student work that are written to demonstrate student knowledge of received work rather than generate new knowledge or analysis. In these cases, we will reject a paper with notification to the author that they are entitled to appeal. To reiterate: this is not a thorough peer review and does not imply accepted materials have been vetted for accuracy or veracity, it’s a quick screening process meant to cut down on papers that offer no new information or original analysis.
1.2 Are complete works. We only accept long-form prose, papers, chapters, books, or reports. We do not accept abstracts, preregistrations, slideshows, posters, or bullet-point lists. Items can be short, but must be complete works.
2. Are in a research area that we support. We accept work in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Education, and Law. (Prior to September 2025 we accepted work in Arts and Humanities, and still preserve those papers.)
3. Are plausibly categorized. We allow authors to select their own categories from our subject taxonomy, but check whether there are obvious errors or categorizations that lack plausibility.
4. Are not fraudulent in any way. Are not plagiarized, are attributed to the correct authors, do not contain “faked” references, do not appear to have the purposes of inflating citation counts, do not describe research that was not conducted, do not describe fraudulent results. While it may at times be difficult to detect fraud, if we detect it, the author will be permanently banned from posting anything to our preprint server. Moderator claims of fraud may be appealed.
5. Are correctly attributed.
- We do a simple Internet search to see if someone else has publicly claimed authorship of the work.
- All authors listed on the work must be included as contributors, and all contributors must be listed on the first page or title page of the work, in the same order.
- The title of the paper must match the metadata entry provided.
- Extraneous information in the title (such as journal name or other metadata) is not permitted.
- Collections in which different authors wrote different parts (e.g., edited volumes) must be submitted as separate papers.
- We require the submitting author to have a publicly viewable ORCID profile linked from the OSF profile page, with a name that matches that on the paper and the OSF account. In the case of non-bibliographic submittors (e.g., a research assistant submitting for a supervisor), the first author must have an ORCID. We can make exceptions for institutional submitters upon request, such as journals that upload their papers for authors.
- We do not allow pseudonymous articles on our server. Anyone found to be submitting work under false or multiple identities will be banned. However, we recognize that the same person may legitimately have changed names or be known under different names for valid reasons including marriage or divorce, gender identity, language differences or different national naming customs. We do accept ORCID or other demonstrations of a consistent identity across varied names.
6. Are in languages that we can moderate. We welcome work submitted in any language, provided we have a moderator that can review it adequately according to our policy. At present we have volunteers available to moderate in English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Swedish (if you can read other languages and want to volunteer, please email us! socarxiv@gmail.com). Papers may be accepted if the moderators are able to do basic (automated) translations and verify the key components of compliance.
7. Are in searchable text formats. Word processing, PDF, and other text files are acceptable. We do not accept image-scanned documents. We recommend PDF formatted documents, as these are most readily displayed and viewed on the platform.
We also seek to accept only papers that comply with copyright law. Although we do not verify copyrights in the moderation process, authors are obligated to share only that work they have the right to share. Actively affirming this is part of the submission process for each paper uploaded. We are not responsible for screening or reviewing content with regard to copyright status. Claims of copyright infringement should be sent to the Center for Open Science in accordance with their policy, which is here.
Procedure
Work will be reviewed by a moderator before appearing publicly on SocArXiv. This includes new versions of work already accepted (authors who gratuitously submit many versions of a paper will be warned and may be banned). If a paper is not accepted, the moderator will include a description of the reason. Work that does not pass moderation will remain on the OSF platform but will not be identified as part of SocArXiv. Authors are free to resubmit such work after addressing the issues raised by the moderator. Authors also may contact us to discuss or appeal a moderation decision. Moderators are volunteers from across the social and behavioral sciences.
Please note: At present we do not have the capacity to query authors during the moderation process. If a paper does not pass moderation we will specify reasons, but we can’t discuss the reasons with the author prior to making a decision. Please don’t be discouraged by negative moderation decisions, and feel free to contact us with any questions.
Ethical violations. Authors who are found to have duplicated work in papers, or committed other ethical violations, may be blocked from further posting.
Abuses of the platform. Submissions that fail to meet the above criteria will be rejected from inclusion in SocArXiv. Allegations of abuse of the platform will be discussed and adjudicated by the moderators. Serial abusers may have their accounts blocked and their materials removed from SocArXiv. Examples of abuse include: repeatedly submitting previously rejected materials, or submitting knowably false information. Submitters who are the subject of an allegation of abuse will be contacted by the moderators and will have an opportunity to appeal.
Institutional authors. Some papers have an institutional instead of an individual author, although they are submitted by a person with an individual OSF account. In such cases, the paper must include contact information for the organization so the publication can be verified.
Authors can discuss or appeal decisions by the moderators by contacting us via email at socarxiv@gmail.com./
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