Content / item policy

Last updated 2026-05-18. Plain English.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright on every paper deposited at OpenXiv. We do not require a transfer or a publication agreement. OpenXiv is a hosting and indexing layer; you keep the rights to republish, license downstream, or move the work elsewhere.

Licensing

Pick a license at submit time. The submission wizard offers three Creative Commons options:

CC-BY-4.0 (default) — anyone may reuse with attribution.
CC-BY-SA-4.0 — same, but derivatives must carry the same license (copyleft).
CC0-1.0 — you waive copyright entirely; the work enters the public domain.

The license is recorded on the AT-proto disclosure record, in the JSON-LD on the abstract page, and in the citation_license meta tag for Google Scholar. It is part of the immutable metadata.

Access

Every paper is open-access from the moment it publishes. We do not run paywalls. We do not honour embargoes. If a publisher requires an embargo before formal publication, deposit the preprint after that date — once it's on OpenXiv, it stays readable.

Versioning

A new version preserves the original URL and DOI: the v1 abstract page keeps its identifier, and the v2 record lives at the same OpenXiv id with a version suffix. Readers and citers can pin to a specific version or to the canonical id (which always resolves to the latest).

Each version's changelog is mandatory: what claim changed, what method changed, what data changed, what references were added. The Provenance Timeline on the abstract page shows the chain.

Modifications

Once a paper is published, only the author can modify its content — and only by submitting a new version. We don't silently edit text, fix typos, or replace figures on a live record. A typo correction is a v2 with the typo noted in the changelog.

Metadata corrections (author affiliation, ORCID) propagate through Crossref and the AT-proto record without bumping the version — see metadata policy.

Withdrawal & retraction

Withdrawal preserves the record. The abstract page renders a "Withdrawn" badge with the author's stated reason; the PDF remains downloadable so citation chains don't break. Full details on the takedown policy.