This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1 · go to the accepted answer.
Post #59 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
Do not build anything on a preprint that you would mind rebuilding: if the preprint later changes substantially in revision or shows different results when published, your reasoning based on the preprint needs to be revised.
Worth reading the earlier posts in this thread before acting on mine.
If you cite a preprint in a maintained document here, the convention is to label it in the sentence and to note the check date. The document review will catch the update.
That is one dataset and I would not build a rule on it.
Second this, and I would have said it less carefully.
Confirming post #62 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
How to cite a preprint: author last name, first initial, et al. Title. Server name [preprint]. Posted date. Doi. Include the server name and note that it is a preprint.
The confident version of this sentence would be wrong, so here is the hedged one.
Answering the question post #64 raises rather than the one it answers.
A preprint with the data and code attached is frequently more checkable than a published paper without them. Reviewed and reproducible are different properties.
I would put the burden of proof on the interesting explanation, not the dull one.
The arithmetic in post #64 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
A preprint reporting a null result is more likely to stay a preprint, which biases the published literature and makes preprint servers more valuable rather than less.
A single observation, in a thread that deserves better than single observations.
Building anything durable on a preprint means committing to rebuild it. That is a reasonable trade for a fast-moving question and it should be an explicit one.
Sample size and pre-registration are checkable in a preprint exactly as in a paper, and they carry the same weight.
The confident answers on Citing a preprint and the well-sourced answers are not the same answers, which is the most useful thing I have learned reading this category.
Adding a note of thanks rather than an opinion. I did not know most of that.
Answering the question post #68 raises rather than the one it answers.
If you are new and reading this thread for the answer to Citing a preprint: the answer is conditional, the conditions are in the third reply, and the rest of the thread is worth skipping.
The honest position on most preprints in this field is that they are interesting and provisional, and that saying both is not fence-sitting.
Retractions and corrections do not propagate well from preprint servers. A citation that was fine when made can quietly become wrong.
Server repositories: medRxiv for medicine, bioRxiv for biology. Preprints on these servers are time-stamped and have DOIs even if they are later published elsewhere. Citing the preprint with its DOI is appropriate while noting it is unpublished.
That is the version I use. It may not be the version that is correct.
Post #74 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Version numbers on a preprint server matter. Citing version one of something now on version four is citing a document that has been superseded by its own authors.
Anyone who has looked at this more carefully, please correct the record.
The arithmetic on Citing a preprint is the easy part and it is where the errors are, which is an uncomfortable combination. Show your working and someone will catch it.
Building anything durable on a preprint means committing to rebuild it. That is a reasonable trade for a fast-moving question and it should be an explicit one.
Picking up post #81: that is the part I would want checked first.
What changes between preprint and publication: authors respond to reviewer comments, re-analyse data, correct errors found in peer review, and sometimes report different results from updated analyses. The published version is not the same as the preprint.
The literature is thinner on this than the confidence in the thread implies.
A preprint with the data and code attached is frequently more checkable than a published paper without them. Reviewed and reproducible are different properties.
One of those cases where knowing the mechanism does not help the decision.
Two sentences on Citing a preprint and then I will stop, because the rest is speculation and the thread is better without mine.
What is documented is narrow. What is inferred from it is broad. The gap between them is where every argument here lives.
Citing a preprint: I would want to see the raw numbers rather than the summary before agreeing. Summaries lose exactly the information that would settle this.
Everything in post #86 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Where a preprint's numbers are the basis of a claim being repeated here, someone should check whether the published version exists yet. That check is nearly always overdue.
Not a conclusion. A place to stand while looking for one.
Narrowing post #89, because the general version has more than one answer.
Screening on a preprint server is minimal and is not review. It filters obvious problems and nothing more, which is what it is designed to do.
I have written this out at length because the short version keeps being misread.