Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions
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: US 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. Here, we have investigated the publishers’ value proposition by conducting a comparative study of pre-print papers from two distinct science, technology, and medicine corpora 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.
- Authors:
-
[1];
[2];
[2];
[2]
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1441346
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-18-20434
Journal ID: ISSN 1432-5012
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- International Journal on Digital Libraries
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 20; Journal ID: ISSN 1432-5012
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION; Open access; Pre-print; Scholarly publishing; Text similarity
Citation Formats
Klein, Martin, Broadwell, Peter, Farb, Sharon E., and Grappone, Todd. Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1.
Klein, Martin, Broadwell, Peter, Farb, Sharon E., & Grappone, Todd. Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions. United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1
Klein, Martin, Broadwell, Peter, Farb, Sharon E., and Grappone, Todd. Mon .
"Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions". United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1441346.
@article{osti_1441346,
title = {Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions},
author = {Klein, Martin and Broadwell, Peter and Farb, Sharon E. and Grappone, Todd},
abstractNote = {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: US 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. Here, we have investigated the publishers’ value proposition by conducting a comparative study of pre-print papers from two distinct science, technology, and medicine corpora 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.},
doi = {10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1},
journal = {International Journal on Digital Libraries},
number = ,
volume = 20,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {2}
}
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