Just to clarify: ArXiv is a pre-print server. By definition anything uploaded there has not (yet) undergone peer review. Posting papers there before they're pub

Just to clarify: ArXiv is a pre-print server. By definition anything uploaded there has not (yet) undergone peer review. Posting papers there before they're published in a journal (which can take many months) is standard practice, not "bypassing publishing practices" or a "leak" per se. In this case there seems to be something fishy going on, but the fact that the papers were made public in this way is not strange in itself. I also hear that it's not uncommon for superconductivity groups to intentionally include "errors" in their early drafts to avoid competitors copying their work before they're ready to publish.