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In the copyright transfer agreement of a journal there is the following sentence:

"The Author warrants that the Work has not been published before in any form except as a preprint."

Nowhere do they mention ArXiv specifically, but does "published to ArXiv" fall under "published as a preprint"?

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    Basically in math, if the journal does not allow the paper to be put on arXiv, you should avoid that journal (and you can easily find a journal which is just as good a fit and which does allow posting on arXiv).
    – Tobias Kildetoft
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 8:01

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Usually depositing a paper in arXiv prior to journal submission does count as a preprint. Wikipedia explicitly says so...here's the wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv.

You can check out this list of journals with preprint policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy If you posted your paper in arXiv before submitting to the journal, do inform the journal (include the link to your paper in arXiv). From your post, it seems that your journal does not have such a tight preprint policy.

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    "The Author warrants that the Work has not been published before in any form except as a preprint" basically means "it's OK if you published a preprint already". I'm not sure why you say this journal "might have tighter preprint policy".
    – ff524
    Commented Jul 29, 2016 at 21:40
  • I meant by tighter policy that there are journals (though small in number) which do not allow preprints. Such as American Association for Cancer Research, JCI etc.
    – Supantho Raxit
    Commented Jul 29, 2016 at 21:50
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    But you wrote "From your post, it seems that your journal" (i.e. the journal that Forever Mozart is asking about) has a tighter policy. This is misleading. From the quoted statement, it seems the opposite is true: that journal does allow preprints.
    – ff524
    Commented Jul 29, 2016 at 21:52
  • Oops! I seemed to have missed the word except. My apologies...EDITED
    – Supantho Raxit
    Commented Jul 29, 2016 at 21:57
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"The Author warrants that the Work has not been published before in any form except as a preprint."

The distinguishing characteristic of a preprint here is that it has not been reviewed. See also the SHERPA/RoMEO definition of a pre-print.

Academic publishers want to be the first to publish a paper and give it the 'seal of approval' that it has passed review.

So what this publisher is essentially requiring is that the paper was not reviewed and accepted for publication elsewhere.

If all you did was posting your pre-print on Arxiv (or some other repository/site), you comply with the publisher's wish.

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