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Still unclear, to the point of being simply wrong. One feature of preprint repositories is to decouple the science from the control of publishers. How do publ

by tofof 8y ago

Still unclear, to the point of being simply wrong. One feature of preprint repositories is to decouple the science from the control of publishers. How do publishers have a say over what can and cannot be posted to these repositories? Particularly when, as the article notes, many preprint articles will never even be published. Please provide a citation if possible, even a single example. "a single repo can't accept work from disparate fields" ArXiv is a single repository that itself hosts papers in mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, quantitative finance, and economics. [1] All are named repeatedly and featured with their own sections on the landing page. Are economics & astronomy considered the same field? How do aggregators (like BASE and CORE) factor in? Why are they not somehow publisher-forbidden? Note also that the arXiv.org FAQ on how they expanded to cover new fields makes no mention whatsoever of publisher restrictions. [2] Instead, it names difficulties like finding qualified moderators for the topics as a barrier, and mentions feasability/desirability as reasons they don't attempt to cover all disciplines. [1]: https://arxiv.org/ https://arxiv.org/ [2]: https://arxiv.org/help/support/faq#1E https://arxiv.org/help/support/faq#1E

Vinnl 8y ago
> How do publishers have a say over what can and cannot be posted to these repositories? Publishers can and do add restrictions on submitted papers, such as "can not have been made public before". Indeed, this does not applies to papers that would never have been published, but it does apply to papers that will later be submitted to a journal. ArXiv never had this problem, because it became widespread before the publishers gained much of their influence. It's been a major hurdle for preprint servers in other disciplines, however. It is a lot better nowadays, where many publishers explicitly allow posting preprints. That said, they do still impose some restrictions, and I can imagine having to post works to preprint servers specific to that discipline being one of them. A server like biorXiv wouldn't want to miss out on those preprints, so they'd have to accommodate that - and biorXiv in particular is very apprehensive about not ruffling any publisher feathers. (Likely a factor in its success.)
lenticular 8y ago
These are restrictions on authors submitting to journals, not restrictions on repos themselves. You can have a preprint repo hosting whatever you want. It doesn't mean that a researcher with a paper published in a given journal can upload it. If people can't upload their papers while still abiding by the policies of the journal, then your repo is kind of useless. Both publishers and individual journals often have restrictions on preprints. This is a very common one with major publishers. Just because you aren't aware of these restrictions doesn't mean that they don't exist. I have worked with preprint repos in the past, and this is very common.

by tofof 8y ago

Vinnl 8y ago

> How do publishers have a say over what can and cannot be posted to these repositories? Publishers can and do add restrictions on submitted papers, such as "can not have been made public before". Indeed, this does not applies to papers that would never have been published, but it does apply to papers that will later be submitted to a journal. ArXiv never had this problem, because it became widespread before the publishers gained much of their influence. It's been a major hurdle for preprint servers in other disciplines, however. It is a lot better nowadays, where many publishers explicitly allow posting preprints. That said, they do still impose some restrictions, and I can imagine having to post works to preprint servers specific to that discipline being one of them. A server like biorXiv wouldn't want to miss out on those preprints, so they'd have to accommodate that - and biorXiv in particular is very apprehensive about not ruffling any publisher feathers. (Likely a factor in its success.)

lenticular 8y ago

These are restrictions on authors submitting to journals, not restrictions on repos themselves. You can have a preprint repo hosting whatever you want. It doesn't mean that a researcher with a paper published in a given journal can upload it. If people can't upload their papers while still abiding by the policies of the journal, then your repo is kind of useless. Both publishers and individual journals often have restrictions on preprints. This is a very common one with major publishers. Just because you aren't aware of these restrictions doesn't mean that they don't exist. I have worked with preprint repos in the past, and this is very common.