Reader query on getting scooped & posting online

I received the following query from a reader today:

In one of your posts some months ago at the Cocoon, you discussed a dilemma about not getting scooped. You asked whether one should try to publish in a very good venue and risk getting scooped or instead publish in a low-ranked journal.  Concerning this issue, here is something I thought about, which might be of interest to you or to readers of your blog. It might be that I’m simply confused about something here. If so, apologies for taking up your time.

I wish there were a way of simply putting one’s paper on some on-line storage place (like philpapers, but not exactly), in such a way that it would count for issues of "who published this idea first". In this way I could put my paper there, and then send it to (e.g.) Mind, without worrying about the fact that it takes them a year to review papers. If I'm not mistaken, in physics and math (also biology, computer science) they have this thing called "arxiv.org" for something like this purpose. When a physicist makes a discovery, she immediately puts it there, thereby publishing it (cf. some episodes of the sitcom "the big bang theory"), and only later worries about sending it to peer-reviewed journals. Putting a paper in arxiv counts as "publishing it first".

Consequently, I think, in the sciences, getting scooped means that while you are working on some project , someone else, who works on a similar project, gets the results first. The competition is about obtaining the results first, not about passing the peer-review process first, which is how it should be, no? In philosophy, somehow the situation is different (perhaps strange): even though you got your results years before another philosopher, she might pass the peer-review process first and thereby scoop you.

As far as I understand, unlike the situation with arxiv, putting a paper in philpapers does not count for purposes of “who published this idea first”. Is this true? If so, why? I wonder if you or your readership can shed some light on this.

As readers may recall, I've worried about this issue for a long time. I've been scooped a few times, and it is incredibly awful to work on something for a long time only to see someone else publish it before you -- perhaps only because of the vicissitudes of the peer-review process. And, of course, this has always been a problem in academia. David Hilbert almost scooped Einstein on General Relativity's field equations. Then there is the Newton-Leibniz priority dispute with calculus. Etc.

In today's day and age, one would think we'd have a good solution to it by now. As our reader notes, physicists have the arxiv -- which I believe they use to settle notions of priority. But of course priority is not the only issue. Citations are a major problem too. It hardly matters if Physicist1 puts theory X on the arxiv first if Physicist2 publishes it first in the Annals of Physics and everyone cites Physicist2. 

I think this is an important issue. People should get credit for their work, regardless of whether they published it first, or even if they never published it at all. If an idea truly is groundbreaking, the people who got there first -- whoever they are -- should be recognized. So, what can we do?

I would like to propose that philpapers be treated as establishing priority. Perhaps, in addition, the area editors could even create database links to papers by (A) thesis defended, and (B) date uploaded. This might help a great deal with the citation issue that I've gone on about recently (I've been frustrated, for instance, to see my 2012 paper, "Unifying the Categorical Imperative", not cited in several papers that have come out since defending very similar arguments). Anyway, such a Philosophical Thesis Categorized by Date Uploaded on Philpapers would immediately enable anyone who wants to write on that thesis to see who has posted a paper on that thesis to philpapers, and when. We could then perhaps have a common disciplinary standard for how priority is to be understood, at least vis-a-vis philpapers. 

What does everyone think?

Comments

[Dan Dennis]

Good idea.

I wonder whether it should be coupled with journals being prepared to add notes to already published papers (they could do it online at least).

So if paper 1 by person X is published in philpapers with idea I and then paper 2 by person Y appears in Phil Review also containing idea I then Phil Review would subsequently add to Paper 2 a note saying that idea I was already published first by person x... (Or, if it is not the same idea but an idea with some similarities, that should have been cited, then stating that)...

BTW Some journals already state when the paper was first received - that's a good idea...

[Guglielmo Feis]

Good idea.

What about www.academia.edu as a further element in the corpus-used-to-establih-priority? (Or maybe also www.researchgate.net even if I have the impression it is less used).

The next step (on which I have no idea) is: such an inclusion can be counted and monitored by google scholar or similar devices? I mean: we want citations that can be measured, don't we?

[Assaf Weksler]

Marcus, thanks for posting about and engaging with my query!

Let me focus on the scooping issue, setting aside citation practices for the moment (you and Dan raise excellent ideas about that). You suggest that we should treat philpapers as establishing priority, and I couldn’t agree more. But what does this come down to in practice? Is it a matter of *deciding* to treat philpapers this way, or does it involve something else, or in addition?

One practical change that comes to might concerns the format of written bibliographic items. At the moment, when a paper is posted online and is not published or forthcoming at some journal, it is cited in the following format: “author name (manuscript)” instead of “author name (year)”, and we also indicate the date the manuscript was downloaded (and not the date it was posted), and of course we do not indicate a venue of publication.

If publishing at philpapers is really publishing, for the purposes of priority issues, then perhaps we should cite like this: “author name(year), archived at philpapers”. Also, perhaps after publication, we should somehow retain the original date of posting to philpapers, like this: “author name(year), journal-name, issue, pages, first posted on philpapers on [year].” So if one waits 6 years for peer-review to run its course, it will still be clear who made the discovery first. Does this make sense?

Guglielmo: it seems that citations of unpublished work from personal websites and philpapers is tracked by Google Scholar, see for example the second item here.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Guglielmo: Thanks for your comment. I guess I want to say that philpapers should be the "gold standard." It is, after all, the single biggest open-access repository of philosophical papers on the planet. If you want priority, post there. Having a more diffuse norm (viz. philpapers OR academia.edu OR SSRN, etc.) just seems to me too broad. Let's all just agree to a disciplinary norm: if it's on philpapers first, it gets priority -- and hopefully, Chalmers and Bouquet can set up the kind of "Thesis-defended-by-date-uploaded" categorization system that would help it work!

Assaf: Thanks for your comment, and for submitting the query! I think that makes perfect sense. I'd very much like to see Chalmers and Bourquet implement that kind of system -- and then have a kind of disciplinary standard (officially sanctioned by the APA) to treat priority that way.

[Guglielmo Feis]

Marcus: even if I joined philpapers because of the cocoon and I'm editing the OIC entry I'm not so sure it should be the "gold standard" for philosophers. The others two have some options the former lacks (mainly in terms of stats you can have as an author).
Nonetheless, I agree we can use it as a "gold standard" for the priority issue. Still, I have some worries due to philpapers going towards a subscription model... will it still be "as open" as before?

Assaf: thanks. I wanted to point out that not all the citations of your works find their way into scholars. At least, that is not my case (and I know how to add my works on scholars, not their being cited elsewhere).
Anyway, the problem is solved if the citing work and the cited work are both on philpapers.

I think the objection that remains before setting this "gold standard" is: can philpapers survive becoming our arxiv or far too many drafts or not-yet-published-on-"standard"-journals-papers will overload both editors and servers?
[Note: understanding how the "standard" journals work is quite difficult if you are not training into it, i.e. if you are not from US or UK. But that's another story]

[Marcus Arvan]

Guglielmo: Could you clarify what you mean when you say that "the other two have some options that the former lacks (mainly in terms of stats you can have as an author)"? I'm just not sure what you mean, or why you're not sure it should be the gold standard.

[David Bourget]

We'd certainly be willing to equip PhilPapers with further tools to help manage scooping-related issues.

Re the concern about subscriptions, everyone will continue to have free access to PhilPapers from home. Also, the PhilPapers Archive is separate and will remain open access no matter what.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi David: Thanks for taking the time to comment. I do hope philpapers implements some such tools. Do you have any idea which tools you might use? In any case, please do keep us informed!

[Guglielmo Feis]

Marcus: Sorry for the late reply. Here I go clarifying. I agree on PhilPapers being the gold standard for this scooping-issue..
I think this does not imply that, as a philosopher, you can do everything with philpapers only (maybe you can, but you need to be in US or UK...).
Academia lets you know about the keywords that bring people to your work, which I find quite useful. Researchgate has some features of reporting impact factor and endorsing skills (I still have no opinion of how useful they are).

David: thank you for these clarification on PhilPapers and the Archive.

Last worry: can uploading a submitted paper on the PhilPapers archive somehow compromise a blind review? [My tentative answer is “no!”, but it’s a fact that none of the paper I have under submission are on the philpapers archive]