29
$\begingroup$

Sometimes it happens that a published paper refers to an unpublished paper for a result used.
In this case, if we want to check this result by ourselves, we need to access to this unpublished paper.

Question: What is the usual process for accessing to an unpublished paper?
Is it the duty of the author (citing it in his published paper) to send it to anyone requiring it?
Or is it the duty of the editor, or of the author of the unpublished paper?

What to do if we can not get it through these means?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
8
  • 19
    $\begingroup$ I'm against this question being closed. To quote the Help Center, MO questions should be "the sorts of questions you come across when you're writing or reading articles or graduate level books" and "well-defined," which perfectly applies here. $\endgroup$
    – Piotr Achinger
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 5:45
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ These days there's little excuse for authors to not make the article available on the internet in some form. It's not like it's the 70s and there's a paper version floating around and you have a friend of a friend who has a photocopy. I would encourage the author to upload it somewhere public, since journals these days realise they can't stop this behaviour, though they lobby against it. If the author doesn't want to make it more widely available, why are they in the business? $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts ♦
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 7:41
  • 21
    $\begingroup$ This can often cause problems - in many cases an author asserts a result, perhaps in a conference talk, when they are convinced that they have a proof, but before it is fully written up. As time goes by, the expected paper fails to materialize for one of many possible reasons - the author loses interest, or can't quite nail down the details or leaves mathematics or dies etc. These non-papers can be a real stumbling block because everyone "knows" that X has proved this, so nobody else writes down the details and so on. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon Royle
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 8:03
  • 9
    $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts If the author doesn't want to make it more widely available, why are the in the business? Perhaps because they joined the business, and were proving difficult or valuable theorems, long before the 56k modem, let alone modern mores? Not everything in maths that some of us need to use is as sparkly and new and enfused with the OS spirit as the Brave New World $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 12:30
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ There is a famous example of the sort you mention, who proved many things in seminars in the 70s-90s, and published none of them. This person then complains when people publish on these topics without citing them, or using their approach. I find this attitude curious, since many of these results are, by the circumstances, known to a select few, and now this person is practically unwilling to share their work. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts ♦
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 23:04

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
13
$\begingroup$

In a broader context, this is the problem of the role of "grey literature" in the progress of science. Wikipedia has quite an extensive overview of this issue, and there is even an academic journal devoted entirely to it. (The Grey Journal, ironically enough itself part of the grey literature.)

I would think that the access part of this issue is the least interesting in these days of the internet (if it's a recent document that is not online somewhere, it might as well not exist); the real issue is the role of unrefereed research in the progress of science: can you rely on an unrefereed result, whether it is the proof of a theorem or the outcome of a clinical trial?

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
7
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Usually, if you cite a result, or a paper, you have access to it, and you can check the proof of the result to see if it is right or not. $\endgroup$
    – Beni Bogosel
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 6:55
  • 13
    $\begingroup$ I agree with the sentiment that access is not nearly as important as correctness, but question the assertion that correctness is synonymous with "refereed". Refereed or unrefereed, I would be very hesitant to rely on a new result unless I either understood the proof myself or was convinced that the community felt certain about it. $\endgroup$
    – Vince Vatter
    Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 10:57
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ There is a great difference between a theorem and a result of a clinical trial. A theorem, when stated, you can try to prove yourself. The good rule is to use ONLY the results whose proof you know, no matter published or not. $\endgroup$
    – Alexandre Eremenko
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 6:24
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @AlexandreEremenko: You know the proofs of all the results you've ever used? I find that quite hard to believe. $\endgroup$
    – cody
    Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 14:47
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @AlexandreEremenko: you mean it's bad practise to use any "big theorem" as a black-box unless you understand its proof? That sounds rather restrictive, the "biggest" theorems usually have very hard and complicated proofs. (To clarify: I agree with your sentiment, but not encoding it as a rule.) $\endgroup$
    – Ketil Tveiten
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 9:54
11
$\begingroup$

  1. I think this is a duty of the author to refer only on those results which are available. (Perhaps not published, but posted somewhere on the Internet). I think it is a duty of the editor and referee to make sure that the authors follow this rule. A result which uses a reference which is not available cannot be considered as proved.

  2. In the case when there is an unpublished reference, which I need, I search on the internet, Google scholar, author's web page, etc. If not found I write to the author and ask her to send me a copy. In pre-computer era, I would write a letter to the author in the case I am really interested in the result.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ I quite agree that work should never rely on unavailable material. But by the rule you give, what should an author do if the earliest/only source they know for a result is in someone else’s unavailable work? The ethic I’m used to is that one should certainly either cite an accessible source or else provide a proof oneself, but also cite the original inaccessible source, for credit and historical accuracy. $\endgroup$
    – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine
    Commented May 28 at 9:58
6
$\begingroup$

As the reader, you can also ask mathoverflow for help finding the paper. There have been some very interesting MO questions along this line. In particular, this record helps others to also track down the same paper (or discover it never existed in the first place). Feel free to add to this list since this is CW:

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
5
$\begingroup$

I did write such a unpublished-but-cited paper. My co-author did not answer to my questions about the journal where to publish it, and then left mathematics. This happened before internet time. It is still cited, usually with the caption Available from D. S. under request. Perhaps I should post the scan on ArXiv. I must confess that I began using ArXiv only a few month ago...

Of course, every member of the PDE community knows about an unpublished paper by (P.-L.) Lions, Papanicolaou & Varadhan. We refer to it as the eternal preprint, a terminology seemingly due to PLL.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
5
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Dear Denis: it seems I am unfortunately excluded by your arguments from being a member of the PDE community, and I want to rectify that. So can you tell me a bit about the "eternal preprint"? (Probably a reference to paper in which this particular pre-print is cited will be good enough.) $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Commented Jun 4, 2015 at 7:51
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ @WillieWong I suspect it is "Lions, P. L., Papanicolaou, G., & Varadhan, S. R. Homogenization of Hamilton-Jacobi equations. 1986. Unpublished paper." At least this is a "pure" citation in Google Scholar by these authors. (You can find papers citing it there too.) // To be clear, I have no idea what is in that preprint, the point of my comment is mainly that Google Scholar contains the titles of papers that in the official literature only exist as citations (which can be generally useful). $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Jun 4, 2015 at 9:19
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @Willie. Quid got it. As you can see, Google Schollar list 360 citations of this paper ! It was a seminal paper in weak KAM theory, as well as in homogenization theory. $\endgroup$
    – Denis Serre
    Commented Jun 4, 2015 at 10:04
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ At the very least, host the paper on your website! The arXiv is a bit picky about scans. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts ♦
    Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 9:25
  • $\begingroup$ My field also has at least one 'eternal preprint', although perhaps I won't name drop. I would be surprised if it's not a very common phenomenon. $\endgroup$
    – LSpice
    Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 16:35
4
$\begingroup$

"What to do if we can not get it through these means?"...

Ask all the people you know. Someone might have a copy. Once you get a copy, and if you find the pre-paper useful, don't forget to advertise that you have a copy, so that others can benefit too.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ I agree, but if the authors do not send me a copy, perhaps they don't want their pre-preprint to be diffused. $\endgroup$
    – Sebastien Palcoux
    Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 15:23

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .