Can I put my accepted-but-not-yet-on-IEEEXplore paper online?

As the comment from Nate Eldredge said: read your copyright agreement and ask co-authors.

You can definitely list the paper in your publications if you mark it as "accepted for...". If the admission committee is interested in reading it (often it is just interested in the title, unless this is the summary of your previous work), they can ask for it.


I would not urge as much caution as the other answer/comment. Of course, checking with your co-authors and publishing agreement won't do any harm but ...

... I would strongly urge you to put the pre-print of the paper online and add a link in the CV since the folks handling your application may want to see the paper but may not be bothered to email you for it ... they will have a long list of CVs to get through, esp. in the initial phases where a confirmed publication could really make you stand out.

I emphasise this because I've seen lots of CVs for research internships and they often try to conncoct publications, mentioning "paper communicated to XYZ", or mentioning internal technical reports, etc. Having a link to a full-text will show them that it is not a vapour-paper and will let them get an idea of the quality of the work. Better still if you can add a link to the list of accepted papers for the conference with your paper in it.

As for contravening a publishing agreement ... any decent CS/EE publisher will, at the very least, allow you to put the pre-print -- the version you submit to them -- online on a personal homepage. If for some reason they don't, you shouldn't publish your work with them. Putting papers on homepages is a common practice that should be strongly encouraged.

If the publisher is IEEE themselves, then it's for sure no problem.


Risk of putting your paper online on your personal page: a 0.000001% chance of getting a cease and desist letter from your publisher asking you to take it offline, in which case you take the paper offline and never submit to that publisher ever again.

Risk of not putting your paper online on your personal page: a small but significantly greater than 0.000001% chance of the folks handling your application not taking the publication into account and you not getting a job offer as a result.