USCIS Policy
O-1A Petitions When Research Is Published Primarily as Preprints
USCIS has no formal policy on preprints as O-1A evidence, but adjudicator practice in evaluating bioRxiv and arXiv submissions has become clearer. Here is what practitioners and researchers in preprint-dominant fields need to know about building a strong petition record.
How USCIS treats preprints under publications
The O-1A publications criterion requires evidence that the petitioner has published scholarly articles in professional journals or major trade publications in the field. The regulation was written before preprint repositories became a primary dissemination channel in several scientific fields, and it does not specifically address preprints, preprint servers, or articles that have been widely cited in the scientific community before or in lieu of formal peer-reviewed publication. USCIS has not issued formal policy guidance specifically addressing preprints, which means their treatment depends on how individual adjudicators evaluate the evidence and whether the petition has provided sufficient context to guide the evaluation. In the absence of formal guidance, the quality of the contextualizing argument about preprints matters significantly.
In fields where preprint dissemination is the dominant initial publication channel — computational biology, high-energy physics, quantitative social science, and machine learning — a petitioner's research output will often include a significant proportion of articles first posted to bioRxiv, arXiv, or similar repositories before peer-reviewed journal publication. These articles may be cited extensively by other researchers before the peer-reviewed version is published, and in some fields the preprint version remains the more widely cited version even after journal publication because it is more accessible. When a petitioner's citation record is built substantially on preprints, the petition must address the distinction between preprints and peer-reviewed publications and establish why the petitioner's preprint-based citation record is nonetheless probative evidence for the publications criterion or for related criteria.
The strongest position for preprint evidence under the publications criterion is to present the preprints in conjunction with their subsequent peer-reviewed journal publication wherever possible. When a preprint posted to bioRxiv was subsequently published in a leading journal, the petition can present both versions, and the peer-reviewed version clearly satisfies the publications criterion. The preprint version then provides additional context — the publication date of the preprint versus the date of journal publication shows how long before formal publication the work was being cited in the field, and citation counts that include preprint citations demonstrate the work's scientific impact before the formal peer review process was complete. This dual presentation turns the preprint history into a strength rather than a gap.
Citation evidence from preprint repositories
Preprint repository citation counts are available from the repositories themselves and from citation aggregators like Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef, each of which indexes citations to preprint versions separately from or in combination with citations to peer-reviewed journal versions. For a petitioner whose work has been widely cited, the distinction between preprint citations and journal citations may be relevant to the petition in either direction: if the peer-reviewed version accumulated more citations after publication, presenting combined citation counts from both versions strengthens the original contributions arguments. If the preprint version is more heavily cited — because many researchers downloaded and cited the preprint before the journal version appeared — the preprint citation record is important evidence that should not be excluded from the citation analysis.
Google Scholar citation counts are the most commonly used citation evidence in O-1A petitions because they are accessible, comprehensive, and familiar to adjudicators. Google Scholar indexes citations to both preprint versions and published versions of the same work, and typically combines the citation counts under a single record for the article. This aggregated count is generally the most complete picture of how often a piece of research has been cited, including citations that appeared before the work's peer-reviewed journal publication. Presenting Google Scholar citation counts for the petitioner's publications, alongside a brief explanation that the counts include citations to preprint versions of articles that were subsequently peer-reviewed, gives the adjudicator an accurate picture of the work's citational impact across its full dissemination history.
For petitioners in fields where peer-reviewed journal publication is common but not universal — where some outputs are always published in peer-reviewed venues, some appear first as preprints, and some remain as preprints without a subsequent journal publication — the petition should distinguish between these categories in the publications exhibit. Works that have been peer-reviewed and published in recognized journals are presented as satisfying the publications criterion directly. Works that exist only as preprints but have been substantially cited are presented as evidence of scientific impact under the original contributions criterion rather than under the publications criterion, where the regulatory standard for qualifying publications may not be clearly met by an unreviewed preprint.
Field standards for preprint-reliant disciplines
Some scientific disciplines have adopted preprint dissemination as the standard first-publication channel to such an extent that a petitioner who only published in peer-reviewed journals without first posting preprints would be the anomaly rather than the norm. High-energy physics has used arXiv as its primary dissemination channel for decades, with peer-reviewed journal publication following months or years later as a formal archiving exercise that the field's practitioners consider secondary to the arXiv posting. In machine learning and artificial intelligence, conference proceedings — which undergo peer review but are not journals — are considered the primary publication venue, and arXiv preprints that are concurrent with conference submissions are treated as the community's first awareness of the work. These field-specific norms are invisible to a generalist adjudicator without expert contextualization.
An expert declaration that explains the field's publication norms and places the petitioner's preprint-heavy record in context is essential for a petition in a preprint-dominant discipline. The expert should explain how research is disseminated in the field, why preprints are the primary initial channel, what peer review processes the relevant preprints have undergone, and how citations to preprints reflect community recognition of the work in the same way that citations to peer-reviewed publications do in disciplines where peer-reviewed journals are the primary channel. Without this explanation, an adjudicator may apply a criterion standard designed for a different publication environment and find the petitioner's record insufficient by a benchmark that was never appropriate for the petitioner's actual scientific community.
The publications criterion also covers scientific publications in recognized scientific journals, but the regulation's use of the term has been interpreted in RFEs and AAO decisions to require peer review. Preprints that have not yet been peer-reviewed or have not been submitted to peer-reviewed journals are at greater risk of being found not to satisfy the publications criterion directly. The petition can address this by presenting preprints under the original contributions criterion as evidence of scientific contributions — which does not carry the same peer-reviewed publication requirement — while presenting peer-reviewed publications, even if fewer in number, as the direct publications criterion evidence. This allocation allows the petition to make use of the full citation record while avoiding reliance on unreviewed preprints to satisfy the publications criterion directly.
Expert declarations for preprint records
Expert declarations in O-1A petitions that rely substantially on preprint records serve a dual function: they must assess the petitioner's standing in the field, as expert declarations always do, and they must also explain the field's publication culture to the adjudicator. An expert who is recognized in the petitioner's field and who can speak authoritatively about how the field disseminates research, evaluates research quality, and attributes scientific credit to preprint authors provides both the personal assessment and the contextual framework that the adjudicator needs. The most effective experts for preprint-heavy petitions are active researchers in the same field who themselves use preprint repositories and can speak from firsthand experience about how preprints function as the primary dissemination channel.
The expert declaration for a preprint-heavy petition should specifically address any preprints that are central to the petitioner's original contributions argument. For each such preprint, the expert should assess the work, identify what contribution it made that was original, explain why that contribution was significant to the field, and note the community's recognition of the work — citing the number of times the preprint has been cited, whether it has influenced subsequent research directions, and whether the work is considered part of the foundational literature in the relevant subfield. This specific assessment converts preprint citations from raw numbers into an evaluated scientific contribution that the adjudicator can assess against the original contributions regulatory standard.
When the petitioner's preprints have attracted formal responses from other researchers — replies, critiques, letters, or comments posted to the repository — those responses are evidence of community engagement with the petitioner's work and can be cited by the expert as indicators of the work's significance and influence. A preprint that draws formal scientific responses — even critical ones — has entered the community's active scientific discourse in a way that indicates its significance as a contribution. The expert can frame this engagement as evidence of the work's impact on the field's research agenda, complementing the citation count evidence with qualitative evidence of how researchers in the field have engaged with the petitioner's ideas.
Combining preprints with other criterion evidence
A petitioner whose research is primarily disseminated through preprints is typically also eligible for other O-1A criteria that do not depend on publication format. Peer review of grant applications and grant award decisions are evaluated as evidence for the judging criterion and the original contributions criterion respectively, regardless of whether the petitioner's own work is published primarily in preprints. A petitioner who has received major competitive grants from NIH, NSF, or comparable agencies has satisfied the awards and original contributions criteria through the grant record even if their publication record is preprint-heavy. Building a criteria argument on the grant record is often a more direct path to meeting the criteria floor for a preprint-heavy researcher than attempting to satisfy the publications criterion with an imperfect preprint record.
Peer review activities provide judging criterion evidence independent of the petitioner's publication format. A researcher who reviews manuscripts submitted to peer-reviewed journals is evaluating others' work in the same or allied field, and the judging criterion is satisfied by this review activity regardless of where the petitioner's own work appears. Many researchers in preprint-dominant fields maintain active peer review relationships with the top journals in their discipline while disseminating their own work through preprints. Documentation of peer review requests and completed reviews — typically through the journal's acknowledgment of the petitioner's reviewer role — establishes judging criterion evidence that complements the preprint-based scientific contribution record and reduces the petition's reliance on the publications criterion alone.
Invited talks, conference keynotes, and symposium presentations document the petitioner's recognition by the scientific community independent of the publication format they use. A researcher invited to speak at a major international conference in their field, present at a National Academy of Sciences workshop, or deliver a plenary lecture at a discipline-defining annual meeting has been recognized as a significant voice in the field by the committees that organize those events. This recognition evidence is entirely independent of whether the petitioner's work is published in peer-reviewed journals or preprints, and it provides a direct path to documenting high-level field recognition that reinforces the original contributions and scholarly achievements criterion evidence.
Responding to RFEs about publications
RFEs questioning whether preprints satisfy the O-1A publications criterion typically ask the petitioner to establish that the submitted preprints have undergone peer review or to provide evidence of scholarly articles published in recognized peer-reviewed journals. The response to this type of RFE should address both the immediate evidentiary request and the underlying adjudicative error. The immediate evidentiary response is to provide documentation of any peer-reviewed publications in the record that were not presented under the publications criterion in the original petition, or to establish through the relevant journals' editorial confirmation that the cited publications underwent peer review and appeared in recognized scientific journals. This direct response satisfies the adjudicator's stated evidentiary need.
The deeper issue addressed in the RFE response is that the adjudicator has evaluated a preprint-heavy record against a criterion standard designed for a traditional publication environment. The response should include a new or supplemental expert declaration that specifically addresses field publication norms, explains why preprints are the primary dissemination channel in the petitioner's field, and assesses the scientific significance of the petitioner's preprint record against the community standards of the field rather than against an external standard based on different dissemination practices. AAO decisions have consistently held that USCIS must evaluate petitions based on the actual field in which the petitioner works, and field-specific publication norms are part of the evidentiary context the adjudicator must consider.
When the petitioner has fewer traditionally published journal articles than the adjudicator would like to see under the publications criterion, the RFE response should redirect attention to the criteria that are more strongly supported by the petitioner's record. If the grant record, the citation record across all venues, the peer review activity, and the invited lecture invitations together demonstrate extraordinary ability even if the peer-reviewed publications criterion is not strongly established, the response should argue for a final merits determination that finds extraordinary ability based on the totality of the evidence — a standard that does not require extraordinary evidence on every criterion, only a totality of evidence that places the petitioner at the top of their field.
What we typically gather for this kind of case
| Document | Where to source | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Peer-reviewed publications | Web of Science / Scopus exports | Anchors original-contributions and authorship criteria |
| Citation analysis | Google Scholar profile + ESI top-1% data | Quantifies major significance in the field |
| Salary benchmark | BLS OEWS for SOC code + locality | Documents high-salary criterion at 90th-percentile or above |
| Critical-role letters | Direct supervisor + program director | Establishes role's importance, not just title |
What we see go wrong, again and again
- 01Treating extraordinary ability as a credentials checklist rather than a story of field-wide impact.
- 02Submitting bibliometric data (h-index, citation counts) without explaining what makes those numbers high relative to peers in the same sub-field.
- 03Relying on letters from collaborators or co-authors rather than independent experts who can speak to influence.
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