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arXiv e-Print archive: Quantitative biology

Fri, 2005-01-07 15:18 — Greg

Posting copies of your preprints online is one way around publishers locking up you work to subscribers only. I just discovered that the arXiv e-print archive has a Quantitative biology section (as of 9/03). For example the the non-free version of a paper that I was interested in reading at the journal of bioinformatics is also available the in the quantitative biology pre-print section at arXiv.


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Mon, 2005-01-10 17:41 — Anonymous

why don't you simply use goo

why don't you simply use google scholar to find it??


Mon, 2005-01-10 18:30 — Greg

The point is not how, but why

The point I was trying to make here was not *how* to find free articles. But that free versions of pay-for-view articles also exist in pre-print archives because publishers allow authors to self-publish.

I will be sure to use google in the future, thank you for your insight into the matter.


Sun, 2005-02-13 09:51 — tigertiger

I moved from lattice gauge th

I moved from lattice gauge theory (preprint archive hep-lat since 1992) to bioinformatics and was always amazed that 13 years after xxx.lanl.gov started, it still had not penetrated science outside of physics and mathematics.

In some sense it was even an early form of blogging: Your newest paper would be available to all colleagues the next morning (it started out as an email service before the web interface). And you would always have an overview of your field and who was doing what. Having a fast distribution scheme was one reason why string theory (hep-th) grew so fast.

By the way, it grew out of the practice of distributing hardcopy preprints by mail to libraries between major institutions, so nobody thought doing it by email and later on the web could be a problem.


Wed, 2005-02-23 14:27 — chris

Volumes

I would argue, however, that the sheer volume of papers coming under the rubrik of bioinformatics make overviews of the field impossible: even the three broad subgenres (expression, sequence, protein analyses) would swamp you.
Perhaps an adaptive filter to remove papers that are

  • trite;
  • applications of someone's favourite algorithm to a funky new bio data set; or
  • tweakings of previous methods increasing speed/accuracy by a whopping 0.1% might make this a little more worthwhile...

    • Cynical? Moi?


    Wed, 2005-01-12 13:44 — chris

    pre-print status

    I believe that pre-print servers have been formally acknowledged for a long time, particularly in the physical sciences. Servers run by universities/institutes are particularly well-regarded.

    Other exceptions can apply at the editor's discretion, for example if the other work is not published in English, or if it is published on a recognized preprint server for review by other scientists in the field before formal submission to a journal.

    Nature guide to authors.

    Re: google scholar. It does in fact index the major preprint repositories, making retrieval much easier.


    Sun, 2005-01-09 14:31 — Neil

    Time for change

    I wholeheartedly concur with the views in the blog link. Signing over copyright to journals is in my view one of the worst modern research practices in existence. Let's hope in 2005 the push for open access continues and aim for 100% acceptance of self-archiving.