Abstract
Open peer review and preprint posting are two of the most widely promoted reforms in scholarly communication, yet evidence on their joint uptake and interaction remains fragmented across disciplines. Drawing on a decade (2015–2025) of metadata from six preprint servers and eleven journals experimenting with open review, we model adoption trajectories and test whether preprint posting predicts subsequent submission to open-review venues. We find preprint adoption strongly predicts later engagement with open review (odds ratio 2.3), but the relationship is asymmetric: open-review adoption does not meaningfully predict subsequent preprint use. Disciplinary variation is substantial, with physics and quantitative biology showing high joint adoption and social sciences lagging on both dimensions. We interpret these results as evidence that preprinting functions as a low-friction "gateway" reform that normalises pre-publication transparency, easing the path toward the higher-friction commitment of open review.