11/18/02Travis Brooks-ASIST 20021 The Unpublishing of High Energy Physics Travis Brooks SPIRES...
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11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 1
The Unpublishing of High Energy Physics
Travis BrooksSPIRES Scientific Databases ManagerStanford Linear Accelerator Center
11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 2
What is SPIRES?
Bibliographic database of over half a million High Energy Physics(HEP)-related articles
Citation searching and tracking for e-prints and journals
First website in U.S. Over 25,000 searches a day Mirrors in 5 countries http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/hep/
11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 3
Unpublished Research
I am a former HEP theorist so the words “unpublished research” call to mind immediately the eprint arXiv.org and its use in High Energy Physics (HEP), especially theory
HEP theory is a relatively tight community of over 1,000 scientists
11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 4
hep-th (Pr)eprints: a Timeline Prior to 1974 preprints sent by mail to
select groups 1974 SPIRES indexes preprints, allows
more general distribution, retrieval 1991 arXiv.org (then LANL) allows
immediate universal electronic access to full-text of preprints
Preprints become eprints Posted by author, no content review
Demise of all HEP journals predicted
11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 5
Current use of hep-th
Studied hep-th from 1997-2001 17,000 papers 13,000 eventually published in
Journals 1,000 in conferences 3,000 remain eprints only
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A New Type of Publication?
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Total
Published
Unpublished
Over these 6 years hep-th has remained stable as a “mature” arXiv.
Over 90% of papers published in Phys. Rev. D were submitted to arXiv
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Topics
How do HEP theorists use eprints? From a statistical view From a physics researcher’s view
Implications and reasons for success of eprints in HEP theory
Issues and opportunities in HEP experimental research
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Cite Counts
Much research has been done using citations as a measure of eprint usage
Citations are important as a measure of what the scientists read
They are also a mark of quality The author believes this work to be
important enough to revise, extend or improve upon its ideas
Citations show where the action is
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Cite Counts II
It has been seen that cites to HEP and related eprints from journals are high and rising (Brown 2001, Youngen 1998, others)
hep-th eprints are similar quality (as measured by cites from all sources) as average journals Impact factor similar (Fabbrichesi
and Montolli, 2001)
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Time series of cites
Brody (2000) has examined the time series of citations within the arXiv
SPIRES allows citation tracking to an article through its life as an eprint, then as a journal article, making no distinction This reflects the HEP scientific
culture
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Why Citations over time?
When (in a paper’s publication journey) does most citing occur?
Plot the number of citations a published hep-th article receives per month after its arXiv submission 8000 published papers in sample Includes citations from journal papers and
arXiv papers (essentially the same set)
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What do HEP theorists read?
Wherever the citation peak is, that is when the most exposure occurred
Citations show that the work was not only read, but taken seriously
If HEP theorists treat unpublished eprints differently than published, peer-reviewed papers: One would expect to see higher citation
rates after publication
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They read eprints, not journals Journal lag time
roughly 6 months Citation peak occurs
after eprint release, not journal release HEP Theorists
don’t care whether an article is published or not when citing it
Invisible bump in citations at journal release
0.4
0.45
0.5
0.55
0.6
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
Avg
num
ber
of c
ites
per
pape
r
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Month after arXiv submission
Average time of journal appearance
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From a HEP theorist’s perspective You read the arXiv papers to find
out the latest scientific information You base your work on what you
read in the arXiv Scientific priority given by arXiv
time stamp, not journal submission date
You don’t notice if it is published
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Peer Review?
This dependence upon the arXiv is not the loss of peer review All hep-th articles are posted for all
of your peers to see! Put shoddy work out there for all to
see, it is known Post uninteresting incoherent
ramblings, it is ignored
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Why do they still publish?
Only a few articles remain unpublished forever
“For the record,” or more likely, “for the tenure/search committee”
Respected, tenured authors may not publish at all Dr. Edward Witten has 9 papers
with over 50 citations that are not published in conferences or journals
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HEP theorist’s viewpoint
arXiv is for daily (journal like) communication
Journals are for “archival” value Overheard about a paper not sent
to hep-th:“He didn’t publish it, he just sent it to Phys. Rev. D”
Eprints are really published literature now
11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 18
Why HEP Theory?
No proprietary/patent issues Papers can be verified by hand, by
any knowledgeable reader Work is like a continuing dialog,
each paper sparking new, creative ideas
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Same basic style Note that the basic publication
style has not really changed HEP Theory has not moved away
from papers written by a few authors to more complex technology-enabled collaborations
11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 20
HEP Experiment
HEP experiment has had more radical changes in working style
Pushing pre-publication scientific collaboration to new levels
Close to 1000 “authors” on a paper
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Experimental Data
Worldwide data processing grid World’s largest database (over 600TB)
from one experiment Unpublished, how is it maintained? Will it persist as useful data?
Current solution is to publish 2 year summary paper of all HEP data Web, db, and maybe raw data may
change this
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Conclusions
hep-th eprints are an incredibly successful tool Filling many traditional journal
roles Still a traditional publication model,
simply a different medium Opportunities for truly different
uses of unpublished research in HEP experiment