What distinguishes acceptable use of a preprint server from unacceptable dual publication? In answering this question, I wondered:
Many fields are now beginning to embrace preprint servers such as arXiv. Typically, authors upload a manuscript to the preprint server at the same time as they submit it to a journal. On the whole, this is seen as acceptable, and not as 'dual publication'.
On the other hand, submission of the same manuscript to two 'proper' journals simultaneously is (in all fields I know) regarded as serious misconduct.
Where, precisely, is the boundary between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' conduct here? What distinguishes a 'preprint server' from a 'journal'? At first glance, one might say 'peer review'. However, journals come in many forms, including 'open review' (where the submitted manuscript is available for anyone to read and comment on immediately), and 'predatory' (where any submission can be accepted without review if you pay the fee). Similarly, many recognised preprint servers exercise some basic quality control on submissions.
Although there is conceivably that &quot;archival&quot; issue, involving the potential question of &quot;which is the authoritative version?&quot;, I don't think that is the genuine point here.
So far as I can observe, the contemporary issues here are two: first, about &quot;getting credit&quot; twice for &quot;one piece of work&quot;, and, second, about making referees (working for free) waste their time and energy.
In mathematics, in the U.S., decades ago, while it was nice to have more papers rather than fewer, it seemed to me that the real gauge of a person was not paper-count at all, but the aggregate of their work/ideas. The idea of worry about &quot;self-plagiarism&quot; did not make much sense then, and it still does disturb me, insofar as it seems to me reasonable to write/speak about one's ideas &quot;endlessly&quot;, without having to promise to never repeat oneself. For that matter, some things are worth repeating, after all.
The not-wasting-referees'-time objection is more legitimate, to my mind.
In particular, then, in math, in the U.S., putting things on arXiv scores no publication-status-points (in math, currently), for many purposes. So it cannot possibly lead to double-counting in any score-keeping game. And there's no refereeing, so no waste of peoples' time.
Similarly, if one does a pay-to-publish publication, whoever's time it may or may not waste, it doesn't score any points status-wise, so there's no double-counting. (Unless one imagines that one's CV-readers don't know the differences among journals/venues.)
Back to the &quot;archival&quot; issue: conceivably traditional journals will maintain their documents longer than others...? Unclear.