Reading of preprints at ORNL
In some scientific fields, preprints of journal articles are an important distribution means. Physics, particularly high-energy physics, is an example. In a 1977 national survey of scientists, it was estimated that scientists received and read 2.1 million preprints.14 In 1981, physicists read about 20,000 separate copies of articles from 19 American Institute of Physics journals; 4,500 of them were preprints. Physical science authors averaged distributing 110 preprints per article.15 Several digital preprint services have evolved in recent years, including the LANL (now at Cornell) arXiv.org e-print archive and the Department of Energy (DOE) Preprint Network. We did not specifically include preprint reading in the 1984 survey of ORNL scientists, but rather included it as part of a general category of separate copies of articles. In the 2000 survey we asked respondents about their awareness of these(and other) preprint services, how much reading they did from them, and whether they submitted articles to the services. About 29% of the ORNL respondents were aware of the arXiv.org service, and about three-quarters of those who were aware had read an average of 7.9 per person from the service in the past 12 months. Roughly one-half of physicists were aware of arXiv.org, and nearly all of those aware had read preprints from it in the past year. Other fields particularly acquainted with the service included engineering (31% aware) and chemistry (20% aware). Of all the respondents aware of the service, only 14% of them had ever submitted article preprints to arXiv.org, even though those respondents averaged authoring or co- authoring about eight articles per person in the last two years. About 10% of the articles published by those aware of arXiv.org were submitted to the LANL service. A similar proportion of respondents (25%) were aware of the DOE Preprint Network, but fewer of them (53%) actually read preprints mentioned by the service. Those who did so averaged reading six preprints per person in the last year. Most of these readers were physicists or engineers. Other services were mentioned and used by a few of the respondents, including Physics of Plasmas, Institute of Physics (IOP) and Nuclear Fusion; Association of Computing Machinery (ACM); and High Tc Update. The total electronic e-print reading amounted to about 3.6% of all reading among ORNL scientists. In addition, about 4.5% of readings were from preprints sent to respondents for article review or refereeing. Since about one-half of reading from separate copies of articles involved preprints, the increase in amount of reading from those separate copies may be partially attributable to reading from preprints and corresponding preprint services.