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by alphydan 4824 days ago
Does anyone know why there's not a free pre-print server (http://arxiv.org/) in other areas of science? It's the morning paper of most theoretical physicists, big papers get published there first (and in Nature, Science second), or even Fields medal winners publish only in the arxiv and avoid journals. Why hasn't this happened in other disciplines? Is it lack of LaTeX knowledge? critical mass? ... I've always wondered.
2 comments
pedrobeltrao 4824 days ago
It was tried and failed in the life sciences. Genome Biology and Nature tried to create pre-print servers but there was no adoption. You can still find Nature's server online (precedings.nature.com). Why have they failed ? I don't know. I think it is a critical mass issue. Usually it takes a switch from a whole community and for some reason it is hard to get life scientists to switch. arXiv does have a quantitative biology section and the genetics and genomics people are using it increasingly.
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RabbitAngstrom 4824 days ago
Also, I have seen wholly unreviewed material in Nature Precedings, which I can only assume is due to the pressure of being scooped. As you might imagine, non-peer-reviewed scientific literature is the antithesis of the research culture, and the few colleagues who have mentioned Precedings have done so with distaste.
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alphydan 4822 days ago
<<non-peer-reviewed scientific literature is the antithesis of the research culture>>. I don't think it's necessarily so. The arxiv is not really peer reviewed (you need to be recommended by someone to enter, but then are free to post pretty much anything).

The research culture is using your own critical thought to separate the wheat from the chaff. There are countless poor quality (and plain wrong) papers which are peer-reviewed. A scientist should not rely only on a journal's peer-review to give a seal of approval.

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mjn 4824 days ago
It's common in the social sciences, economics, and law to use ssrn.com as the main pre-print server. Lack of LaTeX knowledge doesn't seem to be an issue: people just post manuscript-version PDFs exported from Word.

I don't think it's as good an arrangement as arxiv.org, because it's a for-profit company, so I'm more skeptical of its long-term aims. But it's widely used.

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