Side rant: the page has a bibtex entry for arxiv. Look, it's all well and good to publish early and often, but I find I still have some reservations.. I mean, if I use this as a basis for some future work, obviously I will cite it, but I don't particularly feel good about citing an arxiv publication. It completely side-steps the peer review process, and I feel that in the long run, that is bad.
You might say, well working code is working code, and sure I've cited software in the past, and having an article to go with it is even better, but it's getting to the point that people are using arxiv not as a preprint service but as a publishing platform. I find this frustrating for two reasons: 1) like I said, it skips peer review and even allows people to cite rejected papers (for better or for worse), and 2) it makes the race to publish that much more severe -- now if I wait until a conference or journal publishes my work, I'm 6 months behind the guy who just uploads it to arxiv and is already getting dozens of citations in current work.
So, perhaps this is not the place for this debate, but putting aside the fact that preprint does seem like a useful way to "pre-publish", do you think it's appropriate to cite preprint papers and work? What are the implications for computer science as a research field down the road, since "free for all" seems to be taking over as a publication medium?
I know this will come off as being old fashioned, but I'm really worried about where research publication is going in this field. It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to first-to-publish pressure, rather than something that is a well thought-out solution.
You might say, well working code is working code, and sure I've cited software in the past, and having an article to go with it is even better, but it's getting to the point that people are using arxiv not as a preprint service but as a publishing platform. I find this frustrating for two reasons: 1) like I said, it skips peer review and even allows people to cite rejected papers (for better or for worse), and 2) it makes the race to publish that much more severe -- now if I wait until a conference or journal publishes my work, I'm 6 months behind the guy who just uploads it to arxiv and is already getting dozens of citations in current work.
So, perhaps this is not the place for this debate, but putting aside the fact that preprint does seem like a useful way to "pre-publish", do you think it's appropriate to cite preprint papers and work? What are the implications for computer science as a research field down the road, since "free for all" seems to be taking over as a publication medium?
I know this will come off as being old fashioned, but I'm really worried about where research publication is going in this field. It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to first-to-publish pressure, rather than something that is a well thought-out solution.