Is self-archiving publication?
Self-archiving is definitely not publication. For purposes of establishing priority and asserting copyright, anything that is made public, even on a single piece of paper, meets the legal definition of “publication.” Hence so does self-archiving. But for scholarly and scientific purposes, only meeting the quality standards of peer review, hence acceptance for publication by a peer-reviewed journal, counts as publication. Self-archiving should on no account be confused with self-publication (vanity press). (Self-archiving pre-refereeing preprints, however, is an excellent way of establishing priority and asserting copyright.
Self-archiving is definitely not publication. For purposes of establishing priority and asserting copyright, anything that is made public, even on a single piece of paper, meets the legal definition of “publication.” Hence so does self-archiving. But for scholarly and scientific purposes, only meeting the quality standards of peer review, hence acceptance for publication by a peer-reviewed journal, counts as publication. Self-archiving should on no account be confused with self-publication (vanity press).
