A preprint is your paper as you post it on arXiv: the authors named, the acknowledgements in, no page limit, the appendix included. In VersoFold it is not a copy of the paper. It is an edition built from the same LaTeX as the submission, so a typo fixed once is fixed in both, and only the few passages that differ are marked. You can make it at any phase; most people do around submission.
A preprint is not a phase. The phase says where the paper is in its life (Submission, Rebuttal, Camera-ready…) and there is one at a time; the preprint is one of the forms the paper takes, alongside the submission. See Phases and editions.
Some venues limit preprints or publicity during review. Check your venue's policy before you post.
1. Create it
Click the button next to the phase, under the paper's title (it says Paper ▾ or Submission ▾). With only the paper so far, it offers Preprint or Supplementary material: choose Preprint. (Also in Publish → Preprint & editions, and in the phase menu from Submission on.)
Set the options:
The venue style's preprint mode (on by default): the preprint loads the style as the venue asks for preprints, such as
\usepackage[preprint]{neurips_2026}; the submission keeps the review mode.Authors: when the paper's author block is anonymous, write the named one here. When the block already names you and the style hides it for review, nothing needs to change; with a style that prints it as it is, the submission gets "Anonymous" in its place.
Acknowledgements: printed only once the authors are named.
Links: anonymised links (such as
anonymous.4open.science) are listed so you can give their real addresses.
Preview the changes shows every change to your LaTeX, before and after, with its file and line. Nothing is written yet. Create makes exactly that. A saved version is taken first, so you can go back.
VersoFold adds a short block of switches at the top of the main file and a two-line main-preprint.tex beside it. Your paper still builds on its own, on Overleaf too.
2. Look at it
Choose Preprint in the same button:
The PDF shows the preprint, built for you; it is rebuilt after your edits while Auto is on.
The LaTeX shows the preprint's text. It is the same file as before: what only the submission prints folds into a one-line placeholder (click to see it), and the markers step aside. Editing here edits the shared source, so your change reaches the submission too, unless the text is marked.
Colour the differences in the button's menu tints what the preprint adds: the names, the acknowledgements, the appendix. Compare side by side puts the submission's PDF and the preprint's next to each other, with what each one has that the other does not in colour. Paper takes you back.
3. Mark what differs
Select text in the LaTeX and choose Edition in the toolbar over the selection:
Only in the preprint: a longer discussion, an extra experiment, the link to your code.
Not in the preprint: text only the anonymous submission needs.
Anonymous wording…: one phrase in two versions, such as "Anonymous et al. (2025)" in the submission and "Smith et al. (2025)" in the preprint.
The marks are plain LaTeX (\ifpreprint … \fi, \anon{…}{…}). Click a mark's label to remove it. See How the source is marked.
4. Check it
Run the checks in Preprint & editions reads the PDFs as last built: the submission names no author (no names, affiliations, e-mail domains or links that only the preprint has), the preprint names its authors, and every mark is closed. Failed checks come first, with the page where a name was found.
5. Post it, then update it
arXiv package on the preprint's card builds the source arXiv asks for, from the preprint: text marked for other editions is left out of the package, so nothing hidden becomes public. See Prepare an arXiv source package.
Once it is online, Mark as posted on arXiv… records the version (v1), with its arXiv identifier.
After the reviews and your revisions, What changed since v1 lists the sections that changed, and Draft the arXiv comment with the agent writes the comment for v2.
In Camera-ready, the checklist names the authors in every edition in one click and reminds you to update the preprint with the final version.
For the supplementary material and a journal version, and every detail of the marks, see Preprint & editions.
Related: paper phases, submission rehearsal, rebuttals.