Posted 4:40 PM by Garrett
Turning up the heat on preprint servers

This week's Nature features two news articles on troubles with the arXiv.org (or xxx) preprint server; according to one piece, 22 papers were withdrawn amidst allegations of plagiarism; another story,

Critical comments threaten to open libel floodgate for physics archive, reports on one physicist attacking another's work in a paper posted to the archive, and the implications of such uncensored comments. Paul Ginsparg remarked "We don't want these food fights conducted on a regular basis." An editorial (gleefully?) admonishing preprint server and scientific website administrators about libel law kicks off the issue.