[ComodoHacker]

>Publishing by itself does little to advance science

I strongly disagree. Publishing advances science the same way communication advances culture. Imagine Einstein didn't published any of his work. How many decades back in technology and quality of life we'd have been now?

It's like any evolutionary beneficial trait gets transferred to all population in one generation instead of many. It saves precious time.

[raverbashing]

Let me put it this way: there is "publishing" and there's Publishing™

Before electronic communications became popular, publications would publish "letters to the editor" which were kinda like an informal paper with a partial discussion or results (some publications still do that, btw).

My point here is that Publishing™ took place of simply publishing to share results with your colleagues and now the main objectives of Publishing™ is to dodge picky reviewers and to get your publishing score up to get more grants

Thank FSM for Arxiv and for researchers sending "drafts" or "unofficial" versions around