research-article

Comparing Published Scientific Journal Articles to Their Pre-print Versions

Authors:

Martin Klein,

Peter Broadwell,

Sharon E. Farb,

Todd GrapponeAuthors Info & Claims

JCDL '16: Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS on Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

Pages 153 - 162

https://doi.org/10.1145/2910896.2910909

Published: 19 June 2016 Publication History

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Abstract

Academic publishers claim that they add value to scholarly communications by coordinating reviews and contributing and enhancing text during publication. These contributions come at a considerable cost: U.S. academic libraries paid $1.7 billion for serial subscriptions in 2008 alone. Library budgets, in contrast, are flat and not able to keep pace with serial price inflation. We have investigated the publishers' value proposition by conducting a comparative study of pre-print papers and their final published counterparts. This comparison had two working assumptions: 1) if the publishers' argument is valid, the text of a pre-print paper should vary measurably from its corresponding final published version, and 2) by applying standard similarity measures, we should be able to detect and quantify such differences. Our analysis revealed that the text contents of the scientific papers generally changed very little from their pre-print to final published versions. These findings contribute empirical indicators to discussions of the added value of commercial publishers and therefore should influence libraries' economic decisions regarding access to scholarly publications.

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Cited By

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Liu HHu GLi Y(2024) The enhanced research impact of self‐archiving platforms: Evidence from bioRxiv Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.24932Online publication date: 16-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24932
Yudhoatmojo SDe Cristofaro EBlackburn JHorvát ÁHall WContractor NFröhling LOgnayova KTaneja HWeber IGligori? KMejova Y(2023)Understanding the Use of e-Prints on Reddit and 4chan’s Politically Incorrect BoardProceedings of the 15th ACM Web Science Conference 202310.1145/3578503.3583627(117-127)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3578503.3583627
Pagliaro M(2021)Preprints in Chemistry: An Exploratory Analysis of Differences with Journal ArticlesPublications10.3390/publications90100059:1(5)Online publication date: 3-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9010005
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Index Terms

Comparing Published Scientific Journal Articles to Their Pre-print Versions
1. Information systems
  1. Information systems applications
    1. Digital libraries and archives

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Published In

JCDL '16: Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS on Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

June 2016

316 pages

ISBN:9781450342292

DOI:10.1145/2910896

General Chairs:
Nabil R. Adam
Rutgers University
,
Boots Cassel
Villanova University
,
Yelena Yesha
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
,
Program Chairs:
Richard Furuta
Texas A&M University
,
Michele C. Weigle
Old Dominion University

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 June 2016

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Conference

JCDL '16

Sponsor:

JCDL '16: The 16th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

June 19 - 23, 2016

New Jersey, Newark, USA

Acceptance Rates

JCDL '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 15 of 52 submissions, 29%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 415 of 1,482 submissions, 28%

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Citations

Cited By

View all

Liu HHu GLi Y(2024) The enhanced research impact of self‐archiving platforms: Evidence from bioRxiv Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.24932Online publication date: 16-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24932
Yudhoatmojo SDe Cristofaro EBlackburn JHorvát ÁHall WContractor NFröhling LOgnayova KTaneja HWeber IGligori? KMejova Y(2023)Understanding the Use of e-Prints on Reddit and 4chan’s Politically Incorrect BoardProceedings of the 15th ACM Web Science Conference 202310.1145/3578503.3583627(117-127)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3578503.3583627
Pagliaro M(2021)Preprints in Chemistry: An Exploratory Analysis of Differences with Journal ArticlesPublications10.3390/publications90100059:1(5)Online publication date: 3-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9010005
Traag V(2021)Inferring the causal effect of journals on citationsQuantitative Science Studies10.1162/qss_a_001282:2(496-504)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00128
Bero LLawrence RLeslie LChiu KMcDonald SPage MGrundy QParker LBoughton SKirkham JFeatherstone R(2021)Cross-sectional study of preprints and final journal publications from COVID-19 studies: discrepancies in results reporting and spin in interpretationBMJ Open10.1136/bmjopen-2021-05182111:7(e051821)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051821
Hendricks GTkaczyk DLin JFeeney P(2020)Crossref: The sustainable source of community-owned scholarly metadataQuantitative Science Studies10.1162/qss_a_000221:1(414-427)Online publication date: Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00022
Abdill RBlekhman R(2019)Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv preprintseLife10.7554/eLife.451338Online publication date: 24-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.45133
Sanyal DBhowmick PDas PChattopadhyay SSantosh T(2019)Enhancing access to scholarly publications with surrogate resourcesScientometrics10.1007/s11192-019-03227-4121:2(1129-1164)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2019
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Ermakova LBordignon FTurenne NNoel M(2018)Is the Abstract a Mere Teaser? Evaluating Generosity of Article Abstracts in the Environmental SciencesFrontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics10.3389/frma.2018.000163Online publication date: 15-May-2018
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Neylon CPattinson DBilder GLin J(2017)On the origin of nonequivalent states: How we can talk about preprintsF1000Research10.12688/f1000research.11408.16(608)Online publication date: 2-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11408.1

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