[jefft255]

A pre-print is what it is: a version you put online before actually publishing your paper in a conference or a journal. In no field whatsoever an online pre-print is considered equivalent or sufficient compared to a peer-reviewed publication. I wonder which field you are talking about. We're talking about pay to publish here, not pay to read.

[paulgerhardt]

The pre-print loophole is exploited by people who publish in IEEE (electrical engineering) and ACM (computer science) which require assigining exclusive rights to the final article but not the final pre-print. After the final article is accepted but before publication a new clone is put up on their personal website with the name “final pre-print”.

It’s understood in these two fields in these two journals that IF the article was published, the “final pre-print” is identicle and is a “pre-print” in name only for licensing circumvention reasons.

Don’t know about other fields. But CS and EE are particularly prickly about this issue. See for instance Matt Blaze’s discussion: http://www.mattblaze.org/blog/copywrongs

[tialaramex]

For similar reasons Guinea Worm Wrap-up, the main publication about global progress on the eradication of Guinea Worm (a parasitic worm, like not a microbe, not virus, an actual worm, that bursts out of people's legs if they're infected - disgusting and, of course, painful) has a bit of text at the end that says this:

Inclusion of information in the Guinea Worm Wrap-Up does not constitute “publication” of that information.