[Dayshine]

Is your objection to the word "Novel" or to the refusal to reference your work?

If they were not aware of your work, which is the only reasonable assumption, then their work is original and independent research. Almost all work is novel, unless you're arguing they have literally copied your work.

Would you be happy if they dropped that single word?

They would only need to cite you if you're a source. Unless they mention your work or results of your work you're not a source. It feels like you're just giving reviewer feedback that they should improve their introduction by giving more context, which is a quality of writing issue not an ethical one.

If they were to mention you the reader would assume they knew about your work before publication, and the next question would be "why haven't they compared their model to their sources"

Simultaneous publication happens all the time, and it's entirely possible for both papers to be novel. Asking the slower paper to redo work and rewrite just isn't practical, and could be a never ending treadmill.

[keskival]

It's not a never-ending treadmill because the past isn't being modified. It would be fine by me if they adapted the wording to be for example "we validate a method proposed by various authors before".

Of course I would appreciate a citation, but more than that I don't like false claims of novelty to become cemented into the body of scientific knowledge.

The authors are made aware of the project at the time of revising a pre-print, so not correcting the claims is immoral.

Edit:

The word "novel" in the context of scientific publication doesn't mean "new to the authors", it means "not previously published".

More information:

https://chatgpt.com/share/bf9e0de3-e05b-426c-b682-4ffa5f600f...

[Dayshine]

"we validate a method proposed by various authors before"

Does this mean you expect them to add additional analysis to their paper evaluating it against your unpublished work? That's what validating would involve.

I can see an argument for dropping the word novel, but it's a bit semantic as their approach is slightly different and your work isn't part of scientific literature.

I can't see how adding a sentence referencing your work would make sense as it didn't contribute to theirs, and they did not assess it. It would simply confuse. The omission of your work makes it clear they didn't know about it while doing theirs, which provides the accurate context.