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The paper seems absolutely brilliant, but the grammar is very strange (there’s even what appears to be a typo in the paper where he says “rand n” instead of “ra

The paper seems absolutely brilliant, but the grammar is very strange (there’s even what appears to be a typo in the paper where he says “rand n” instead of “rank n”). Odd that he wouldn’t have worked with somebody with better written English before publishing.

anamexis 4y ago
It isn't published, it's a pre-print.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  If you can download it from arxiv, it is published. Researchers don’t really care whether the paper went through formal peer review and publication process in some journal, because that process is of little value: they can figure out that the author meant rank instead of rand etc.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    "Published" in this context is short for "published to a journal" or more completely for this thread "gone through the full edit cycle you would expect from a paper published to a journal". For example, https://arxiv.org/help/jref https://arxiv.org/help/jref says: > When a article is published, the author may wish to indicate this in the abstract listing for the article. For this reason, the journal reference and DOI (Digital Object Identifier) fields are provided for articles. This can only make sense if "public abstract on arxiv" is not the same as "published" in the way you mean.
    - kwhitefoot 4y ago
      Don't abbreviate unless you have great confidence that everyone hearing or reading your words shares the same dictionary.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        And this is not the case here? I mean, there's always going to be today's 10,000 [1] who doesn't know what, say, "VB.NET"[2][3] means. [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) But explaining or footnoting everything defensively, rather than pointing out misconceptions as they arise, seems excessive. Further, someone may deliberately use a minority definition in order to stress a philosophical point. One valid viewpoint is that a publication is a publication is a publication. A preprint, a blog post, or a peer-reviewed journal publication should be given equal weight as being "published." I'll call this position #1. Another valid point is that some works are incomplete, and may go through multiple drafts before reaching the final, "published" form, which it's best known by, and is likely the most polished of the versions. I'll call this position #2. Often people want feedback, and one way to get feedback is by publishing a preprint. (There are others. I recall reading of a mathematician, about a century ago, who would first publish in his home country, and native language, to get friendly feedback from colleagues, before publishing in English. He's cited for his later publication.) Someone who holds position #1 might fully understand that I use the dictionary with position #2, and still deliberately use position #1 in order to popularize that #1 dictionary. The difference isn't one of confusion or lack of knowledge, but one of viewpoints. Let me be clear - I'm not saying that that's the case here. Instead, my example is meant to show it's not necessarily so simple as "shares the same dictionary" or not.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      I understand what it means, which you could have seen by reading my comment carefully. My point is that this publication process is of little value these days.
      - anamexis 4y ago
        I believe you when you say you understand, but your first sentence was "If you can download it from arxiv, it is published." Which is precisely what GP was responding to. Furthermore, this thread started with someone complaining about the lack of polish which the publication process can provide.
  - petschge 4y ago
    There is definitely a difference between "public(ly available on arxiv)" and "published (in a peer-reviewed journal)". Depending what I want to do I may prefer on or the other for my work as a researcher.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      Sure, but if the paper is never published in a journal, and just exist as a pdf on arxiv forever, you won’t treat it any different than if it was published. You’ll still ignore it if it looks crap, still read it if it looks promising, still tell your friends about it if it has interesting results, still cite it etc. In short, it doesn’t matter much if the paper was formally published.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        The "doesn’t matter much" is, I think, the crux of the matter. commandlinefan's earlier negative aside concerned language quality. IMO, I think people hold peer-review journal published papers to a (slightly?) higher language quality standard than what may be the first of several preprints. And I think anamexis was pointing out that difference. As Wikipedia says: "The immediate distribution of preprints allows authors to receive early feedback from their peers, which may be helpful in revising and preparing articles for submission." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint I expect that may include identifying and fixing typos.
petschge 4y ago
You have no idea how atrocious the English is in papers that I see as a reviewer. And depending on journal I don't even get to reject it for that as long as the science is sound.
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  > And depending on journal I don't even get to reject it for that as long as the science is sound. and you shouldn't. As long as it is somewhat legible, forcing people who are not native English speakers to conform to another language 100 % in order for their science to be published is horrendous. There was a time 300 years ago, where great thinkers who did not speak French or German could not publish their thoughts and answers, and to us now it seems atrocius. Let us not go a head and redo that with English
  - petschge 4y ago
    The problem is that "somewhat legible" is not a given and you don't know if the version that comes out of language editing (if it is still done, a lot of journals skip it to save money) is still scientifically correct. Edit: A possible solution would be to have "good idea, please language edit and send back for further review" as an option along with "reject" / "needs major revisions" / "needs minor revisions" / "accept".
  - Y_Y 4y ago
    The goal of publishing is that others can read your work. If it's badly written it will be hard to understand, and extra hard for non-natives.
    - heywhatupboys 4y ago
      actually, sometimes "native" English is much harder to read for non-natives than a non-native writing, due to 1. less vocabulary, and 2. more straight forward sentence structure.
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > and you shouldn't If you say so - but honestly, why not just publish it in French then (I think the author is French)? If I were publishing something in French - technical or scientific or otherwise - I’d want it to be reviewed by a native speaker.

anamexis 4y ago

It isn't published, it's a pre-print.

xyzzyz 4y ago
If you can download it from arxiv, it is published. Researchers don’t really care whether the paper went through formal peer review and publication process in some journal, because that process is of little value: they can figure out that the author meant rank instead of rand etc.
- eesmith 4y ago
  "Published" in this context is short for "published to a journal" or more completely for this thread "gone through the full edit cycle you would expect from a paper published to a journal". For example, https://arxiv.org/help/jref https://arxiv.org/help/jref says: > When a article is published, the author may wish to indicate this in the abstract listing for the article. For this reason, the journal reference and DOI (Digital Object Identifier) fields are provided for articles. This can only make sense if "public abstract on arxiv" is not the same as "published" in the way you mean.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    Don't abbreviate unless you have great confidence that everyone hearing or reading your words shares the same dictionary.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      And this is not the case here? I mean, there's always going to be today's 10,000 [1] who doesn't know what, say, "VB.NET"[2][3] means. [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) But explaining or footnoting everything defensively, rather than pointing out misconceptions as they arise, seems excessive. Further, someone may deliberately use a minority definition in order to stress a philosophical point. One valid viewpoint is that a publication is a publication is a publication. A preprint, a blog post, or a peer-reviewed journal publication should be given equal weight as being "published." I'll call this position #1. Another valid point is that some works are incomplete, and may go through multiple drafts before reaching the final, "published" form, which it's best known by, and is likely the most polished of the versions. I'll call this position #2. Often people want feedback, and one way to get feedback is by publishing a preprint. (There are others. I recall reading of a mathematician, about a century ago, who would first publish in his home country, and native language, to get friendly feedback from colleagues, before publishing in English. He's cited for his later publication.) Someone who holds position #1 might fully understand that I use the dictionary with position #2, and still deliberately use position #1 in order to popularize that #1 dictionary. The difference isn't one of confusion or lack of knowledge, but one of viewpoints. Let me be clear - I'm not saying that that's the case here. Instead, my example is meant to show it's not necessarily so simple as "shares the same dictionary" or not.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    I understand what it means, which you could have seen by reading my comment carefully. My point is that this publication process is of little value these days.
    - anamexis 4y ago
      I believe you when you say you understand, but your first sentence was "If you can download it from arxiv, it is published." Which is precisely what GP was responding to. Furthermore, this thread started with someone complaining about the lack of polish which the publication process can provide.
- petschge 4y ago
  There is definitely a difference between "public(ly available on arxiv)" and "published (in a peer-reviewed journal)". Depending what I want to do I may prefer on or the other for my work as a researcher.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    Sure, but if the paper is never published in a journal, and just exist as a pdf on arxiv forever, you won’t treat it any different than if it was published. You’ll still ignore it if it looks crap, still read it if it looks promising, still tell your friends about it if it has interesting results, still cite it etc. In short, it doesn’t matter much if the paper was formally published.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      The "doesn’t matter much" is, I think, the crux of the matter. commandlinefan's earlier negative aside concerned language quality. IMO, I think people hold peer-review journal published papers to a (slightly?) higher language quality standard than what may be the first of several preprints. And I think anamexis was pointing out that difference. As Wikipedia says: "The immediate distribution of preprints allows authors to receive early feedback from their peers, which may be helpful in revising and preparing articles for submission." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint I expect that may include identifying and fixing typos.

petschge 4y ago

You have no idea how atrocious the English is in papers that I see as a reviewer. And depending on journal I don't even get to reject it for that as long as the science is sound.

heywhatupboys 4y ago
> And depending on journal I don't even get to reject it for that as long as the science is sound. and you shouldn't. As long as it is somewhat legible, forcing people who are not native English speakers to conform to another language 100 % in order for their science to be published is horrendous. There was a time 300 years ago, where great thinkers who did not speak French or German could not publish their thoughts and answers, and to us now it seems atrocius. Let us not go a head and redo that with English
- petschge 4y ago
  The problem is that "somewhat legible" is not a given and you don't know if the version that comes out of language editing (if it is still done, a lot of journals skip it to save money) is still scientifically correct. Edit: A possible solution would be to have "good idea, please language edit and send back for further review" as an option along with "reject" / "needs major revisions" / "needs minor revisions" / "accept".
- Y_Y 4y ago
  The goal of publishing is that others can read your work. If it's badly written it will be hard to understand, and extra hard for non-natives.
  - heywhatupboys 4y ago
    actually, sometimes "native" English is much harder to read for non-natives than a non-native writing, due to 1. less vocabulary, and 2. more straight forward sentence structure.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > and you shouldn't If you say so - but honestly, why not just publish it in French then (I think the author is French)? If I were publishing something in French - technical or scientific or otherwise - I’d want it to be reviewed by a native speaker.