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