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This study examines the relation between acceptance times in preprint publishing and journal publishing. Specifically, we investigated the association between a paper’s posting time to bioRχiv, a preprints server, and journal articles’ peer-review and acceptance time for PLOS ONE. So far, of the total papers published in 1,626 academic journals, the average publication rate of those posted in bioRχiv is 40.67%. Meanwhile, PLOS ONE was the journal that published more papers. Analysis of peer-review and acceptance time of papers published in journals via preprints showed the time these papers are posted in relation to these intervals. The median of the peer-review and acceptance time of the journal submission date that was later than the date of first posting to bioRχiv was 110.00 days, and in the reverse case, it was 139.50 days. Posting to the preprint server before journal submission shows a better order than vice versa. This study provides us a good understanding of the peer-review process. It also gives us good insights into optimizing this process, which would then facilitate paper publication and knowledge dissemination.

This study uses statistical methods to analyze the differences in peer review periods between the processes of preprint based on authors’ order of posting published papers in a given journal. For this purpose, we developed a web crawler that downloaded metadata from bioRχiv and PLOS ONE. The average publication rate of papers posted in bioRχiv accounts for 40.67% of the total thus far. These papers were published in 1,626 academic journals. The journal that published most of these papers was PLOS ONE. Analysis of Peer Review and Acceptance Time (PRAT) of papers published in journals via preprints revealed the timing of posting papers related to these intervals. The median of PRAT of f < s was 110 days, and the median of PRAT of s < f was 139.50 days. If the date order of publishing a paper is the posted date of the preprint before the date of submission to the journal, the PRAT tends to be shorter than when the date order of publishing a paper is the posted date of the preprint after the date of submission to the journal.