4 ms·

The first sentence of the article begins "Twenty years ago", and yet the article itself is undated. This appears to be entirely normal for scientific papers.

The first sentence of the article begins "Twenty years ago", and yet the article itself is undated. This appears to be entirely normal for scientific papers. Can anyone tell me how this foolishness came to be considered acceptable among scientists, and why it persists?

londons_explore 6y ago
Because traditionally, articles were published in journals, and journals had the date written on the cover, so it was superfluous to add it on every page.
- mjw1007 6y ago
  That seems rather sloppy to start with: you could easily end up a year or two out (the date that matters isn't the date of publication, it's the date that was in the author's head when they wrote something like "Twenty years ago"). In any case nowadays I think there's no excuse for this practice continuing. It's far too common for a paper to get sent around, or put on the author's personal website, with no associated date at all.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > you could easily end up a year or two out (the date that matters isn't the date of publication, it's the date that was in the author's head when they wrote something like "Twenty years ago") Doesn't matter. If the author was thinking of a specific year, they'd say the year. If they say "20 years ago", everything that was "20 years ago" this year is also "20 years ago" a couple years from now.
    - mjw1007 6y ago
      It's common for papers to include words like "recently", or indeed "has not yet", which are rather more time-sensitive and still don't specify an exact year.
  - gmueckl 6y ago
    Some journals have the date of submission and the date of acceptance in the paper header for this reason. Unfortunately, it is not a common practice.
  - Animats 6y ago
    Yes. It's become a real problem. Sometimes you have to look at the references, which do have dates, to get a rough idea of when the paper was published. Or at least what date it could not have been published before.
xenocyon 6y ago
It depends on how you come across the paper. Peer-reviewed scientific journals (as well as some preprint channels that aren't peer reviewed) are fully explicit about the date of publication. However, if those same papers are published on another website, they might lack metadata such as date and publication venue. This is a good reason to link to the actual publication source instead of to a PDF copy of the paper (unless you have good reason not to, such as a paywall). PS: in this case: it turns out that the paper was published in the International Symposium of Formal Methods Europe, 1996: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77
- feanaro 6y ago
  > This is a good reason to link to the actual publication source instead of to a PDF copy of the paper (unless you have good reason not to, such as a paywall). It would still be best to include the date inside the artifact itself instead of relying on external and contextual metadata like you are describing. As long as we're at it, documents should also ideally include their DOI.
  - compiler-guy 6y ago
    1996 predates most of the web as we know it today. It was a different time with different standards.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      I agree. My comment wasn't about shaming the old standards but about establishing new ones.
tsorferaoh 6y ago
Presumambly the PDF doesn't include the date because it is camera-ready copy for a journal (in this case the filename includes the year of publication). In general, I'd say people are sloppy about this because publishing is like a super-public form of notarization, which has the effect of placing the name of the article into public indices and databases, most importantly the list of contents of that journal. It's not that people don't care about the date—it's that they have no difficulty finding out what it was.
- mjw1007 6y ago
  I observe that the same is true for the paper's authorship information, but nobody seems to have any difficulty placing that prominently near the top of the document itself.
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
I presume it's a slow feedback loop. It's always fine immediately after you do it, and I don't think brains learn very well from small mistakes we made years ago.
wukkuwukku 6y ago
https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1996-hoare.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1996-hoare.pdf 1996 is in the URL. This is less a science thing and more an Internet culture thing, IMO. Documentation norms online have changed with variablized URLs full of computed data
IncRnd 6y ago
This was published in 1996, where the journal was dated. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77

londons_explore 6y ago

Because traditionally, articles were published in journals, and journals had the date written on the cover, so it was superfluous to add it on every page.

mjw1007 6y ago
That seems rather sloppy to start with: you could easily end up a year or two out (the date that matters isn't the date of publication, it's the date that was in the author's head when they wrote something like "Twenty years ago"). In any case nowadays I think there's no excuse for this practice continuing. It's far too common for a paper to get sent around, or put on the author's personal website, with no associated date at all.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > you could easily end up a year or two out (the date that matters isn't the date of publication, it's the date that was in the author's head when they wrote something like "Twenty years ago") Doesn't matter. If the author was thinking of a specific year, they'd say the year. If they say "20 years ago", everything that was "20 years ago" this year is also "20 years ago" a couple years from now.
  - mjw1007 6y ago
    It's common for papers to include words like "recently", or indeed "has not yet", which are rather more time-sensitive and still don't specify an exact year.
- gmueckl 6y ago
  Some journals have the date of submission and the date of acceptance in the paper header for this reason. Unfortunately, it is not a common practice.
- Animats 6y ago
  Yes. It's become a real problem. Sometimes you have to look at the references, which do have dates, to get a rough idea of when the paper was published. Or at least what date it could not have been published before.

xenocyon 6y ago

It depends on how you come across the paper. Peer-reviewed scientific journals (as well as some preprint channels that aren't peer reviewed) are fully explicit about the date of publication. However, if those same papers are published on another website, they might lack metadata such as date and publication venue. This is a good reason to link to the actual publication source instead of to a PDF copy of the paper (unless you have good reason not to, such as a paywall). PS: in this case: it turns out that the paper was published in the International Symposium of Formal Methods Europe, 1996: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77

feanaro 6y ago
> This is a good reason to link to the actual publication source instead of to a PDF copy of the paper (unless you have good reason not to, such as a paywall). It would still be best to include the date inside the artifact itself instead of relying on external and contextual metadata like you are describing. As long as we're at it, documents should also ideally include their DOI.
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  1996 predates most of the web as we know it today. It was a different time with different standards.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    I agree. My comment wasn't about shaming the old standards but about establishing new ones.

tsorferaoh 6y ago

Presumambly the PDF doesn't include the date because it is camera-ready copy for a journal (in this case the filename includes the year of publication). In general, I'd say people are sloppy about this because publishing is like a super-public form of notarization, which has the effect of placing the name of the article into public indices and databases, most importantly the list of contents of that journal. It's not that people don't care about the date—it's that they have no difficulty finding out what it was.

mjw1007 6y ago
I observe that the same is true for the paper's authorship information, but nobody seems to have any difficulty placing that prominently near the top of the document itself.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago

I presume it's a slow feedback loop. It's always fine immediately after you do it, and I don't think brains learn very well from small mistakes we made years ago.

wukkuwukku 6y ago

https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1996-hoare.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1996-hoare.pdf 1996 is in the URL. This is less a science thing and more an Internet culture thing, IMO. Documentation norms online have changed with variablized URLs full of computed data

IncRnd 6y ago

This was published in 1996, where the journal was dated. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-60973-3_77