11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 1

The Unpublishing of High Energy Physics

Travis BrooksSPIRES Scientific Databases ManagerStanford Linear Accelerator Center

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 2

What is SPIRES?

Bibliographic database of over half a million High Energy Physics(HEP)-related articles

Citation searching and tracking for e-prints and journals

First website in U.S. Over 25,000 searches a day Mirrors in 5 countries http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/hep/

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 3

Unpublished Research

I am a former HEP theorist so the words “unpublished research” call to mind immediately the eprint arXiv.org and its use in High Energy Physics (HEP), especially theory

HEP theory is a relatively tight community of over 1,000 scientists

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 4

hep-th (Pr)eprints: a Timeline Prior to 1974 preprints sent by mail to

select groups 1974 SPIRES indexes preprints, allows

more general distribution, retrieval 1991 arXiv.org (then LANL) allows

immediate universal electronic access to full-text of preprints

Preprints become eprints Posted by author, no content review

Demise of all HEP journals predicted

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 5

Current use of hep-th

Studied hep-th from 1997-2001 17,000 papers 13,000 eventually published in

Journals 1,000 in conferences 3,000 remain eprints only

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 6

A New Type of Publication?

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

Total

Published

Unpublished

Over these 6 years hep-th has remained stable as a “mature” arXiv.

Over 90% of papers published in Phys. Rev. D were submitted to arXiv

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 7

Topics

How do HEP theorists use eprints? From a statistical view From a physics researcher’s view

Implications and reasons for success of eprints in HEP theory

Issues and opportunities in HEP experimental research

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 8

Cite Counts

Much research has been done using citations as a measure of eprint usage

Citations are important as a measure of what the scientists read

They are also a mark of quality The author believes this work to be

important enough to revise, extend or improve upon its ideas

Citations show where the action is

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 9

Cite Counts II

It has been seen that cites to HEP and related eprints from journals are high and rising (Brown 2001, Youngen 1998, others)

hep-th eprints are similar quality (as measured by cites from all sources) as average journals Impact factor similar (Fabbrichesi

and Montolli, 2001)

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 10

Time series of cites

Brody (2000) has examined the time series of citations within the arXiv

SPIRES allows citation tracking to an article through its life as an eprint, then as a journal article, making no distinction This reflects the HEP scientific

culture

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 11

Why Citations over time?

When (in a paper’s publication journey) does most citing occur?

Plot the number of citations a published hep-th article receives per month after its arXiv submission 8000 published papers in sample Includes citations from journal papers and

arXiv papers (essentially the same set)

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 12

What do HEP theorists read?

Wherever the citation peak is, that is when the most exposure occurred

Citations show that the work was not only read, but taken seriously

If HEP theorists treat unpublished eprints differently than published, peer-reviewed papers: One would expect to see higher citation

rates after publication

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 13

They read eprints, not journals Journal lag time

roughly 6 months Citation peak occurs

after eprint release, not journal release HEP Theorists

don’t care whether an article is published or not when citing it

Invisible bump in citations at journal release

0.4

0.45

0.5

0.55

0.6

0.65

0.7

0.75

0.8

Avg

num

ber

of c

ites

per

pape

r

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Month after arXiv submission

Average time of journal appearance

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 14

From a HEP theorist’s perspective You read the arXiv papers to find

out the latest scientific information You base your work on what you

read in the arXiv Scientific priority given by arXiv

time stamp, not journal submission date

You don’t notice if it is published

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 15

Peer Review?

This dependence upon the arXiv is not the loss of peer review All hep-th articles are posted for all

of your peers to see! Put shoddy work out there for all to

see, it is known Post uninteresting incoherent

ramblings, it is ignored

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 16

Why do they still publish?

Only a few articles remain unpublished forever

“For the record,” or more likely, “for the tenure/search committee”

Respected, tenured authors may not publish at all Dr. Edward Witten has 9 papers

with over 50 citations that are not published in conferences or journals

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 17

HEP theorist’s viewpoint

arXiv is for daily (journal like) communication

Journals are for “archival” value Overheard about a paper not sent

to hep-th:“He didn’t publish it, he just sent it to Phys. Rev. D”

Eprints are really published literature now

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 18

Why HEP Theory?

No proprietary/patent issues Papers can be verified by hand, by

any knowledgeable reader Work is like a continuing dialog,

each paper sparking new, creative ideas

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 19

Same basic style Note that the basic publication

style has not really changed HEP Theory has not moved away

from papers written by a few authors to more complex technology-enabled collaborations

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 20

HEP Experiment

HEP experiment has had more radical changes in working style

Pushing pre-publication scientific collaboration to new levels

Close to 1000 “authors” on a paper

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 21

Experimental Data

Worldwide data processing grid World’s largest database (over 600TB)

from one experiment Unpublished, how is it maintained? Will it persist as useful data?

Current solution is to publish 2 year summary paper of all HEP data Web, db, and maybe raw data may

change this

11/18/02 Travis Brooks-ASIST 2002 22

Conclusions

hep-th eprints are an incredibly successful tool Filling many traditional journal

roles Still a traditional publication model,

simply a different medium Opportunities for truly different

uses of unpublished research in HEP experiment