I am a physicist and have a couple issues with this conclusion. I think the general claim that the editors of journals add very little to the published work is probably correct. However, the claim that there are no significant changes between the pre-print version and the published version is rubbish.
My most recent paper, which was just accepted for publishing in Physical Review B, was sent out to two referees. Referee A had not a whole lot to say but pointed out an explanation that we had provided for an method was unclear to non-experts. Referee B was perhaps overly thorough but actually pointed out a few instances where specific word choices could lead to the incorrect conclusions being made. He or she also found a couple minor stylistic errors that had slipped through our editing.
While the total number of words changed was probably under 5% (maybe even closer to 1 or 2%), the revised manuscript is certainly better than the pre-print version.
The next step is for the journal to copy-edit the manuscript. This step usually consists of changing British English to American English and spelling out some abbreviations or abbreviating other words but can sometimes uncover typos that made it through peer editing. In any case, I agree that this is less useful than the peer review.
It is certainly ridiculous that the public has to triple pay for research (they pay me to do it, they pay for me to access and submit to journals, and they have to pay if they want to access the research). However, I have yet to see an alternative to the current peer review process that is facilitated by the journals.
In many cases, I have encountered papers on the arXiv which are completely incorrect. The papers in question have not been published and likely wouldn't be published without significant changes. I myself have manuscripts on the arXiv that contain small errors which have been fixed in the published versions. Depending on the journal we can usually replace the pre-print version with the published version after some length of time (6 months I believe) but this is not always done.
Sadly Google's algorithms have fallen victim to the PR
Google "who invented email"
Very sad. I pressed the feedback button and reported it as false or misleading.
I would encourage everyone else to do the same.
Somewhat misleading
My most recent paper, which was just accepted for publishing in Physical Review B, was sent out to two referees. Referee A had not a whole lot to say but pointed out an explanation that we had provided for an method was unclear to non-experts. Referee B was perhaps overly thorough but actually pointed out a few instances where specific word choices could lead to the incorrect conclusions being made. He or she also found a couple minor stylistic errors that had slipped through our editing.
While the total number of words changed was probably under 5% (maybe even closer to 1 or 2%), the revised manuscript is certainly better than the pre-print version.
The next step is for the journal to copy-edit the manuscript. This step usually consists of changing British English to American English and spelling out some abbreviations or abbreviating other words but can sometimes uncover typos that made it through peer editing. In any case, I agree that this is less useful than the peer review.
It is certainly ridiculous that the public has to triple pay for research (they pay me to do it, they pay for me to access and submit to journals, and they have to pay if they want to access the research). However, I have yet to see an alternative to the current peer review process that is facilitated by the journals.
In many cases, I have encountered papers on the arXiv which are completely incorrect. The papers in question have not been published and likely wouldn't be published without significant changes. I myself have manuscripts on the arXiv that contain small errors which have been fixed in the published versions. Depending on the journal we can usually replace the pre-print version with the published version after some length of time (6 months I believe) but this is not always done.
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