How to know if a paper is allowed (by publisher/journal/conference) to be put on arXiv? [duplicate]

Question

I am a 2nd-year PhD student. I have published two conference papers, and now I want to upload a copy to arXiv. I am aware it is common (flexible) for researchers in some areas (e.g. machine learning) to upload their papers on arXiv; However, it is uncommon in my research area/targeted publications, but I think it would be useful for wide-access (my research area: algorithm-hardware co-design for machine learning)

I wonder how to know If a paper is allowed to be put on arXiv?

• Do publishers have rules against that? Or It is the Journals/conferences have rules against that? Where can I find them (generally)?
• Are there any rules on the version of the paper that is allowed? e.g. pre-publication, camera-ready, post-publication etc.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Check the publisher's website. They should have policies for putting papers on arXiv.

For example here is Elsevier's policy page, and:

• Authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time.
• If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the preprint to their formal publication via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Millions of researchers have access to the formal publications on ScienceDirect, and so links will help your users to find, access, cite, and use the best available version.
• Authors can update their preprints on arXiv or RePEc with their accepted manuscript .

So for this publisher the answer is "yes", you are allowed to put papers on arXiv as well as update them once the peer review process is complete.

Answer 2

I wonder how to know If a paper is allowed to be put on arXiv?

You can put papers on arXiv before signing any copyright waiver, then papers are always allowed. (Albeit some venues - surely very few, if any - may refuse to publish papers already on arXiv.) When a paper is already published, you need to check the publisher's rules, which vary between publishers.