I don't see how this is even a question. A paper "published" to arXiv is published, in the more general sense of the word. Just because it isn't "journal published" doesn't change anything.
Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
81–90 of 114 posts
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
You couldn't even cite it as "in preparation"?
No, I couldn't. In academia, when publishing a technical paper, only final/published papers count. I doubt that this was a "rule" enforced only at my University or even just in my country. I'd love to hear from others where citing arXiv was at least allowed, but I doubt that that would have been the "standard" way of citing in technical papers. I must add that this was such a pain for me, as I found several relevant…
This strikes me as the wrong way to think about citations.
Citations to a finalized version of a published, peer-reviewed article are "best", both in terms of assigning credit (this is what the authors are supposed to be producing) and as a pointer to more information for the reader (the article has been reviewed[0], it won't change, and there's a stable location for it). Work that isn't peer reviewed shouldn't be outright banned or ignored, but the citation should carry a lot less weight. It hasn't been reviewed, it's subject to change, etc. Since these are essentially someone's musings on a topic, when you cite paper to "prove something" (e.g., you write "The work of XYZ et al. (2017) shows that is not a problem"), people will give it correspondingly less weight.
There is a long tradition, predating arXiv by decades, of citing technical reports or "white papers". These are usually written up like a journal article, but might be difficult to publish (all negative results) or contain more details than a typical journal publication would allow. If there is a "journal" version and a "tech report" version, it would probably be better to cite journal version, but I would be shocked if someone actively objected to including a tech report.
(In some disciples, the white papers are also the only thing available. The World Bank and Federal Reserve, for example, often release white papers containing their own data. They rarely bother to publish them in a journal though).
[0] For whatever peer review's worth :-/
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#83How is "flag-planting" even relevant to this ? You only cite what you use and you should not be using vapid hollow flag-planting sources from _anywhere_. Someone needs a fresher course on academia 101. Is it the reviewers ?
The issue is that some people (appear to be) submitting very preliminary, and arguably low quality work to arXiv to stake a claim to some area. Once that work is "out there", people who were making a more serious effort to do things more carefully are obligated to cite the original work, presumably as part of the related work/background/etc.
I can see how this would be maddening, particularly if you started before the flag-planting paper was even written.
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#84Seems like this is a case of "whatever you measure will be gamed": counting citations is an important part of how academics are evaluated at work, so we get flag-planting behavior to maximize that metric with minimal effort.
There's a similar issue in journal publishing: counting "published works" without regard for where leads to journals that will publish literally anything for cash.
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kind of math that would be necessary to understand papers like [1][2][3][4]. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04933 [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07875 [3]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.01350 [4]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.04860
That's mostly linear algebra, probability theory and calculus. You're going to have a difficult time self-studying all of that if you haven't had much exposure to it. Books are probably a less efficient method of learning the mathematics if you have targeted subjects you want to learn about. They're typically suited to introductions and breadth-wise coverage of fields, but once you get higher up, "linear algebra" (fo…
> I don't particularly read machine learning papers often, but I read mathematical cryptographic ones very often (at least once per day I find myself in a new one).
Where do you find new ones? I'd like to get into this.
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#86I am astounded that people would question citing an arxiv paper. If you get an idea from somewhere else, you cite it. This doesn't even have to do with the archive. I have on multiple occasions read papers where the author wrote a proof and then cited "private communications" with another mathematician as the source. In a business where ideas are ideas, you should always cite the source. Anything else is extremely di…
I don't think the issue is the act of citation itself, more that the citation is meant to provide a level of assurance that the idea you're citing is true. If you cite a paper in Science that carries with it a knowledge that some clever people have looked over it and can't see any obvious issues with the work. If you cite a napkin sketch that doesn't carry that weight and pushes the onus on to the reader to verify th…
I disagree with your statement about papers in Science. pretty much every paper I read in science has basic invalidating errors that would have been caught if it had more review. Papers in Science are fast-tracked to be published as soon as possible so the competitors don't get published in Nature first.
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#87In the future, the question will be "Do I really have to cite "?
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's mostly linear algebra, probability theory and calculus. You're going to have a difficult time self-studying all of that if you haven't had much exposure to it. Books are probably a less efficient method of learning the mathematics if you have targeted subjects you want to learn about. They're typically suited to introductions and breadth-wise coverage of fields, but once you get higher up, "linear algebra" (fo…
> I don't particularly read machine learning papers often, but I read mathematical cryptographic ones very often (at least once per day I find myself in a new one). Where do you find new ones? I'd like to get into this.
The IACR eprint archive, which is essentially arXiv for cryptography. Essentially everything worth reading in cryptography is either in the IACR eprint archive or a conference proceeding. All conference proceedings from the IACR conferences can be read online for a fairly cheap membership fee. More often than not everything is cross-posted to the eprint archive even if it's published in a journal (which there's basically one: The Journal of Cryptology) or a conference.
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#89I don't see how this is even a question. A paper "published" to arXiv is published, in the more general sense of the word. Just because it isn't "journal published" doesn't change anything.
Publishing in a (reputable) journal generally means some degree of peer review. While noisy, this process generally means that really outrageous methodological errors or theoretical claims get weeded out. For a good paper, it means that other researchers have pressed them on specific aspects of the work, which often produces stronger work (new methods, better baselines, clearer argumentation, clearer math).
I adore arXiv but still believe it's a preprint. In my field (cognitive science) it would be great if we had more methods to sidestep Elsevier and the other commercial publishers and have an open stack with rigorous peer review (PLoS being the main way currently).
Re: Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
#90There is a massive disjunct between citation in the humanities and citation in science. People seem to have forgotten this. Ideas are two a penny, they literally do not matter at all they should not be cited. The person who introduces a concept to science deserves no credit whatsoever. What deserves credit is the provision of evidence or proof.
What? Leibniz/Newton introduced the concept of calculus; shouldn't we credit them with this (amazing) concept just because it wasn't formalized very well until Weierstrass came along?
In my view, Leibniz / Newton did enough heavy lifting to deserve credit for developing the field. This is way different than just blurting out a "concept" without even knowing if it's workable.
I'm in agreement that ideas are a dime a dozen. Sure, it's necessary to cite the first known mention of an idea, and there are situations where the first mention of an idea is important such as in the patent system.
"Planting" happens in my world all the time. Unfortunately, managers give a lot more importance to "ideas" than they are really worth, because they over-value their own interventions in general. Somebody will blurt out an idea in a meeting, wait until someone else has developed it, and then rush in to take credit. If a manager does this, it's a blow to morale. I have my own rule of thumb, which is "show your work" from math class. Just writing down the answer doesn't get you full credit.
A couple of historical examples: The ancient Greeks are credited with the atomic theory, but they had no concept of even turning it into a serious hypothesis. Lots of ideas are anticipated in science fiction, but do those authors really deserve credit?