On the origin of nonequivalent states: How we can talk about preprints

Increasingly, preprints are at the center of conversations across the research ecosystem. But disagreements remain about the role they play. Do they "count" for research assessment? Is it ok to post preprints in more than one place? In this paper, we argue that these discussions often conflate two separate issues, the history of the manuscript and the status granted it by different communities. In this paper, we propose a new model that distinguishes the characteristics of the object, its "state", from the subjective "standing" granted to it by different communities. This provides a way to discuss the difference in practices between communities, which will deliver more productive conversations and facilitate negotiation, as well as sharpening our focus on the role of different stakeholders on how to collectively improve the process of scholarly communications not only for preprints, but other forms of scholarly contributions

Comparing Published Scientific Journal Articles to Their Pre-print Versions

Klein Martin, Broadwell Peter, Farb Sharon E. et Grappone Todd, « Comparing Published Scientific Journal Articles to Their Pre-print Versions », arXiv:1604.05363 [cs], 18 avril 2016. http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.05363 Academic publishers claim that they add value to scholarly communications by coordinating reviews and contributing and enhancing text during publication. These contributions come at a considerable cost: U.S. academic libraries paid $1.7 billion for serial subscriptions in 2008 alon..

Citations to arXiv Preprints by Indexed Journals and their Impact on Research Evaluation

[EN] This article shows an approach to the study of two fundamental aspects of the prepublication of scientific manuscripts in specialized repositories (arXiv). The first refers to the size of the interaction of ¿standard papers¿ in journals appearing in the Web of Science (WoS) ¿ now Clarivate Analytics ¿ and ¿non-standard papers¿ (manuscripts appearing in arXiv). Specifically, we analyze the citations found in the WoS to articles in arXiv. The second aspect is how publication in arXiv affects the citation count of authors. The question is whether or not prepublishing in arXiv benefits authors from the point of view of increasing their citations, or rather produces a dispersion, which would diminish the relevance of their publications in evaluation processes. Data have been collected from arXiv, the websites of the journals, Google Scholar, and WoS following a specific ad hoc procedure. The number of citations in journal articles published in WoS to preprints in arXiv is not large. We show that citation counts from regular papers and preprints using different sources (arXiv, the journal¿s website, WoS) give completely different results. This suggests a rather scattered picture of citations that could distort the citation count of a given article against the author¿s interest. However, the number of WoS references to arXiv preprints is small, minimizing this potential negative effect.The work of the first, second, and third author was supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Spain, under Research Grant CSO2015-65594-C2-1R Y 2R (MINECO/FEDER, UE). The work of the fourth author was supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Spain, and FEDER, under Research Grant MTM2016-77054-C2-1-P. The authors would also like to thank the referees for their useful comments and references, which helped them to improve the work, especially in Section 5.Ferrer-Sapena, A.; Aleixandre-Benavent, R.; Peset Mancebo, MF.; Sánchez Pérez, EA. (2018). Citations to arXiv Preprints by Indexed Journals and their Impact on Research Evaluation. Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice (Online). 6(4):14-24. https://doi.org/10.1633/JISTaP.2018.6.4.2S14246

El papel transformador de los preprints en la aceleración de la comunicación científica

Preprints are versions of research papers available prior to formal publication. The term has been used for decades. They are preliminary research reports, which have not been subjected to editorial scrutiny and peer review. The exchange of preprints among researchers in the scientific area was a common policy before the web, especially in the scientific-technical field. In certain highly dynamic disciplines, such as physics, where a system of scientific communication already existed, in which preprints were a fundamental element, change has already taken place, this being the main means for the communication of research results. The fundamental value of preprints is that they allow scientists to access cutting-edge findings more quickly than when authors send their findings directly to traditional journals, which often take months to complete. The main criticism of the model is that, compared to the advantage of speed of publication, it raises doubts about its reliability and credibility. The document analyzes the citation capacity and the value of preprints as transforming and accelerating elements of scientific communication