Parallel Paper Submission

[Anand Venkataraman]

> What about publishing everything on the web and leave ALL kinds of paper
> publications. There could be a section where "unpublished" papers are
> published and the readers can cast votes as to "publish" them in the
> published section. This way soemthing that is useful but not "published" can
> be taken care of, while the normal people can act as reviewers and make the
> status of "unpublished" change to "published" through their vote.

The problem with this is that it is not very clear who gets to vote.
Proper and conscientious reviewing of papers by well qualified individuals
is not only of service to the community, but also to the authors.  It
ensures that their papers do not see ink prematurely and become a source of
embarrassment later on in their careers.

A similar forum as you suggest is already available through the repository
at www.arXiv.org where people are invited (and frequently do) post papers
and reports that they may not intend to publish.  Many publications also
cite these arXived papers as though they were actually in print.

&