
Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions - rbanffy
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1
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woliveirajr
> We have shown that, within the boundaries of the arXiv corpus, there are no
> significant differences in aggregate between pre-prints and their
> corresponding final published versions.

Considering that many articles were funded by public money, at least
partially, knowing that pre-print and expensive peer-reviewed articles have
almost the same content, I just praise arxiv and other initiatives.

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Vinnl
While arXiv is great, the sad thing is that even in disciplines where
researchers are used to reading research from there, researchers still feel
the need to publish in regular journals (understandably [0]), which keeps us
dependent on the traditional publishers and hence wastes a lot of public
money...

[0] [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-
ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-
break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

------
inetsee
Quote from the bottom of the paper:

"This is a U.S. government work and its text is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States; however, its text may be subject to foreign
copyright protection 2018"

However, Springer is still saying that you have to pay them $39.95 in order to
get a pdf of the paper that probably costs them a few cents to deliver.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Springer isn't your secretary, though. Feel free to get a free legal copy from
anyone else .

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olliej
TLDR from the preprint: The hypothesis was that if publishers did anything
meaningful there would be a significant difference between the preprint and
published versions of a paper.

There were not.

~~~
gmiller123456
"anything meaningful" isn't quite what they analyzed, they just analyzed the
claim that they "contribute and enhance text" during publication. The fact
that they didn't can't be used to jump to the conclusion that they didn't do
anything meaningful. E.g. by determining a paper meets certain standards of
accuracy, transparency and relevance would be some meaningful things that
could still be done.

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m-watson
Here is the pre-print version of the article:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.05363](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.05363)

It is a kind of funny situation that springer has this published.

Pre-prints are extremely useful in fields where they are widely used. Physics,
my original field, uses arxiv as well as self hosted locations. I know biology
is trying to do more of this as well. I really don't understand why other
fields just start pushing towards this more open model.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I think there is a difference between a preprint that has gone through peer-
review but lacks a journal's formatting than an archive where you post your
research prior to peer review.

In the latter, crummy articles are frequently posted for the mere purpose of
planting a flag, and you have no basic assurances that they did things to a
reasonable standard of quality. In the former, you just lack "publish
formatting" which often just means "lowering the DPI on your carfully crafted
figures with their crappy automatic article formatter."

~~~
woliveirajr
In that article they make distinction among articles that were previously
submited to arxiv and articles that were first published and then just added
by the author to arxiv. The great majority was articles being pre-printed
first and then being peer-reviewed.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I should have checked first. Good point, at least in regards to the article's
subject matter. I would expect even less difference between the after peer
review pre-print and the article.

A question about arxiv. Can the preprint be updated by the authors? I can
imagine wanting to update a preprint after getting input from reviewers.

Second question. Is this research then suggesting that peer-review does
little?

~~~
Vinnl
> Can the preprint be updated by the authors

Yes, it can, altough it's not consistently done in every discipline, so unless
you are familiar with a discipline, you can't rely on the research being most
up-to-date.

> Is this research then suggesting that peer-review does little?

I think it's important to make a distinction between the formal peer review
process, and the concept of peer review. There's a lot of remarks to be made
about the former. In some disciplines, however, it's common to share research
on arXiv, collect feedback from readers there, and submit a version to a
journal that incorporates that feedback - it's not a stretch to call that peer
review as well.

But to somewhat answer the question: practices between disciplines on arXiv
vary too much to draw conclusions about the formal peer review process based
on this research, in my opinion.

