Brand new to preprints? Check out this introductory video from ASAPBio
How will submitting a preprint help me/others?

By making your work shared quickly and publicly, you will be able to share your work with colleagues months, even years, before you would, had you submitted only to a peer-reviewed journal. The peer-review process takes time, and during that time you are without a citable manuscript to share. As Earth Arxiv provides a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) upon submission, your preprints are citable and shareable immediately after submission. Many authors find that sharing a preprint maintains enthusiasm about the research and leads to helpful feedback, which makes the ultimate submission to a peer-reviewed journal better. The early and continued attention also has another payoff: Preprints that do end up in journals appear to be cited more frequently. Being citable, preprints can help early career scientists to build a scholarly track record much faster. This can benefit people who are seeking funding or a job. Many funding agencies now allow preprint citations in grant proposals. Preprints can also benefit both young and established researchers by providing more access to their work. Many peer reviewed journals require subscription charges that are prohibitive to some institutions. By placing your research on an open and freely available preprint system, anyone in the world can discover your work.

Are EarthArXiv preprints indexed by Google Scholar
Yes. The California Digital Library (CDL) team follows all recommended Google Scholar best practices and we see Google Scholar crawling our site roughly once per week. We see preprints quickly and regularly appearing on Google Scholar after acceptance at EarthArXiv. Yet, we do want to highlight that despite following all Google Scholar procedures, Google Scholar is a third-party service and EarthArXiv/CDL have no control on Scholar's internal workflow and publishing timelines.
How might preprints and post-prints (peer reviewed articles) affect citations?
When you submit a manuscript to EarthArXiv a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) will be created and the preprint will become publicly accessible via the service. You will be unable to delete the preprint file, but you can update or modify it. When (if) the manuscript passes through peer review you can modify your preprint page to also include the DOI of the peer reviewed article. The preprint and the peer reviewed article are considered distinct works - thus, unique DOIs - and citations can be made to either. Generally, authors will cite, and encourage others to cite, the peer-reviewed version when/if available. However, you should be aware that the full set of citations to your research may include citations of the preprint and citations of the peer reviewed article. Services such as Google Scholar do not currently merge these citation counts.
Can I submit related materials along with my paper, e.g. data and code?
By linking, yes.EarthArXiv does not currently host the supplementary materials, but we do provide options to link your preprint to materials hosted elsewhere. EarthArXiv encourages authors to use free hosting sites such as GitHub, Zenodo, FigShare, and others. During preprint submission, EarthArXiv provides options for authors to include links to these external sites, which will be displayed alongside the published preprint.
How do I know if the journal I am submitting to will not object to a preprint/postprint of my manuscript?
The good news is that, during the past several years, many more Earth science journals have accepted preprints as another valuable aspect of the publishing workflow. EarthArXiv recommends the Sherpa/Romeo publisher copyright database as a good starting point for authors: SHERPA/RoMEO. However, we strongly encourage authors to also check the specific copyright and sharing information provided by their journal of choice. Postprints will not be accepted if they are within the embargo period of the publishing journal; and embargo periods can vary by publisher, journal, and country of corresponding author, and can be found on publisher’s websites, and SHERPA/RoMEO. Final note: if you have submitted your manuscript to EarthArXiv after submitting it to a journal, and the journal rejects publication of your manuscript your published preprint will remain public on EarthArXiv. In such a case, if you submit your manuscript to another journal, a very small chance exists that the next journal you submit to will not accept a manuscript that is available as a preprint. While such journals are less and less common, be aware that this might happen and plan accordingly (e.g., check that all the journals that your article might cascade through before ultimately being published accept preprints).
Does EarthArXiv have plans for publishing talks and posters?
Not for the moment. Talks and posters are very valuable resources and should be captured. Yet, talks and posters are fundamentally different from manuscript preprints and require a different set of concerns. Optical character recognition, extracting figures, and viewing posters on mobile devices are not easy challenges to overcome. EarthArXiv is hesitant about conflating posters and papers in one system given the varying technical requirements and volumes - the number of talks and posters far outweighs the number of manuscripts. For these reasons, EarthArXiv is starting off with a focus only on manuscripts. We want to do preprint manuscripts — along with associated data and code — and do them well. As our system and community evolve, we may revisit poster and talk archiving; but, at this time, our focus is on manuscript preprints.
Isn't the American Geophysical Union launching a preprint service? And related questions:
Did you know this was coming?
Yes, we did. Several of us at EarthArXiv have been having discussions with AGU and they had mentioned it was coming. Although, we didn’t know the details until we saw the official release announcement. AGU has been open about their preprint intentions to the extent possible given their ongoing negotiations with Wiley. In particular, the AGU Senior Vice President, Publications, Brooks Hanson, has been in contact with our group several times in attempts to bring numerous societies, archives, and interested groups to the table to discuss preprint topics.
Does this change your plans for EarthArXiv?

No, this doesn’t change our plans. Many within EarthArXiv have fundamental philosophical concerns with AGU's technical implementation plan. We favor a completely open approach independent of any publishers. We would like a community-led, transparent, and open source effort. The AGU approach is a contract with a major publisher and is built on top of proprietary software. This is not a specific criticism of AGU or Wiley. Publishers should be part of the discussions. Yet, it raises questions about the long term nature of the system when a publisher — any publisher — is doing the development. Questions that we think can be avoided by being open source and independent from the start.

What we wish is to involve publishers in our preprint efforts. Yet, we think that a vibrant ecosystem of advances emerges only when the implementation of the preprint system is independent of any one publisher, the software is open source, and there is an open advisory/governance model. Therefore, it remains to be seen to what extent, if at all, the community will be able to extend the AGU/Wiley Atypon system.

Is this the end of AGU and EarthArXiv working together?
No. Not at all. Even though we disagree on the technical infrastructure, we very much agree with AGU on the need to bring all the interested parties to the table to discuss best practices and higher level issues surrounding preprints. We continue our efforts to engage AGU in these discussions.We are going to pursue different implementations of our ideas, but we hope to continue to work together on best practices in preprint publishing.
Is there now a competition between ESSOAr and EarthArXiv?
In a constructive way, yes. The AGU's Earth and Space Science Open Archive (ESSOAr) presents an alternative place to publish. In that regard, we will compete for papers, but we view it more as an inherent part of how science works. Anyone is able to put their ideas out there for debate, testing, and validation. We differ with AGU over implementation, and we are offering the community an alternative.