From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 16:18:44 +0000

"These are subtle things. Pre-publication on arxiv is precarious - it
pre-opens a Pandora's box of priority disputes.”

But does it though? arXiv has been going for almost 25 years now and
has well over a million papers on it.  Is there any evidence that
there is a significant problem with priority disputes?  Or more
specifically that there are more priority disputes here than in the
general literature?

David


On 18 Mar 2016, at 02:15, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Ari Belenkiy <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 21:00:25 -0700

Jim,

I think the major issue here is priority and thus -- tangentially -- copyright.

Here is my experience - for what it worth.

Three days ago my own paper was pre-published:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15700720-12341264

It was submitted on Christmas eve 2014 and appeared at the VC website
several days ago, March 11, 2016.  So its way up took almost a year
and 3 months. (And it is not formally published, or rather is not
assigned yet to a particular issue.)

But along the way, I twice submitted corrections and improvements. And
they increased paper's value significantly - not the major claim that
remains the same but supporting arguments.

Well, this is a history of science work. But imagine it is a hard
science! If you make a mistake in a long series of arguments and
someone else corrects it, who is the author of the final result?

These are subtle things. Pre-publication on arxiv is precarious - it
pre-opens a Pandora's box of priority disputes.

Ari Belenkiy
Vancouver BC