5 ms·

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

• 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.