1/ For those watching from the stands, let me correct this. Publication in open access journals is meant for rapid dissemination of preprints; it’s not a substitute for publication in peer reviewed archival journals. Neither guarantees validity, but readership numbers do matter.
2/As of this writing ssrn.com/abstract=33757… has been viewed nearly 12,000 times and downloaded over 700 times. As Arthur Jago points out in his CHE essay (chronicle.com/article/Can-It…) it’s impossible to know how that compares to archival journal articles, but in this era of
3/electronic journals, we have a pretty good idea. The average PLOS or SSRN article is viewed approx 800 times. SSRN places the BMD paper in the top 5% downloads of its 888,0000 articles. It is a paper that has received a lot of critical scrutiny even in prepublication.
4/Preprints are meant to solicit early feedback and wide dissemination of results. Why not wait until the paper is peer-reviewed and published? There are two obvious answers.
5/First, it takes a lot of time, and many results (in computer science at least) are time-sensitive. Waiting 18-24 months to disseminate would be a disservice. @umbernhard assumes that the paper isn’t being submitted for eventual publication, and he’s also incorrect about that.
6/Second, why wait? The authors distributed the paper for critical feedback from scientists who held opposing views and incentives to find errors. Those comments were taken into account in the April version. SSRN posting opened the paper up to even wider review and criticism.
7/Critical comments from readers are also being taken into account for subsequent revisions. A lot like it. A lot don’t. No one has refuted the arguments. Some have offered alternative interpretations and mitigations. So far, so good.
8/The validity of the paper is a separate issue that is unrelated to the form of publication. My 1979 paper with Lipton and Perlis (doi.org/10.1145/359104… )on errors in mathematics is a sampling of peer-reviewed math articles that turned out to be incorrect.
9/On the other hand early circulation of preprints (especially electronic versions) accelerates the review process as the rapid reviewing and debugging of a subsequently withdrawn proof of P=/NP in the GLL blog (rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/iss…) demonstrated to the world.
10/It’s always easier to attack irrelevancies & motives rather than the argument itself. As I have pointed out on a number of occasions that’s the lowest form of disagreement. paulgraham.com/disagree.html Since our sole concern is the security of voting, we welcome serious arguments.
