From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/554 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: categories Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: e-prints Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 16:12:56 -0400 (AST) Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241017033 26250 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 14:57:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:57:13 +0000 (UTC) To: categories Original-X-From: cat-dist Sat Dec 6 16:12:57 1997 Original-Received: (from cat-dist@localhost) by mailserv.mta.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA24897; Sat, 6 Dec 1997 16:12:56 -0400 (AST) Original-Lines: 60 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:554 Archived-At: Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 13:19:58 -0800 (PST) From: john baez Jim Stasheff writes: > you can input your macros directly into your tex file But you don't need to. You can also upload a bunch of separate files using the uufiles program obtainable from the preprint archive. It's painless and easy. Information on this and a million other technical issues is available at the archives themselves. Try: http://eprints.math.duke.edu/ or send email with subject header "help" to q-alg@eprints.math.duke.edu > as for the plagarism issue, I will let the experts respond I'm no expert, but I don't see what the problem is. If you upload your paper to one of these archives, the paper itself and the exact date and time it was first received is publicly accessible, so any attempt by anyone to plagiarize it would be incredibly easy to prove. If you store your papers on your own site, it's much harder to prove you wrote them before someone else. This is one reason why highly competitive physicists rush to put their papers on the archives as quickly as possible: to get a certified time stamp on their paper! Anyway, I've never heard of any problems with plagiarism actually happening. In case it's not been made sufficiently clear, the main advantages of having all papers on a given subject stored electronically at a single institution are: 1) they are easy to find 2) they are easy to refer to 2) they stay there, archived, while the authors move from institution to institution and ultimately perish. Will our institutions keep our websites going after we die, while technology continues to change? Many of my papers (or pointers to them) appear on Ginsparg-style preprint archive, my own website, Hypatia, Mathematical Reviews, the category theory mailing list, and paper journals --- all of which serve different purposes. Presumably some of these systems will fall into disuse in a natural sort of way as time passes. I wouldn't advocate the brutal elimination of existing systems. I think the question now is: would category theory be served by creation of a Ginsparg-style preprint archive for the subject?