Absolutely, Dave. - Graham Steel

Interesting idea. Nothing comes to mind as a potential reason not to (though some will inevitably yell "it's not peer reviewed!"). - Bora Zivkovic

there are some things on ArXiv that are post-prints... and besides, the acceptance rates for things from ArXiv in physics journals is probably over 70%, I say go for it. But of course, any other repository might be different. - Christina Pikas

Would say you need to think carefully about what you think ResearchBlogging is for. It started very strongly as being about peer reviewed research. Strictly Arxiv is not obviously enough. If it is about published research then fine, but if the criteria is peer review you should hold that line, but perhaps be flexible in the future about what peer review means exactly. - Cameron Neylon

Thanks for the comments. These are exactly the concerns I had as I was thinking about this. I think it comes down to the standards of the discipline -- and clearly most of the disciplines in arXiv think it's a valuable, reliable resource. - Dave Munger

Exactly - when I first saw your question I thought: if this was any other repository in any other discipline I would say No, but arXiv has heft and has earned the trust by the people in the disciplines that contribute there. - Bora Zivkovic

but why not create a different section for pre-prints that track ArXiv , Nature Precedings and any other relevant one ? - Pedro Beltrao

i think if you say yes to Arxiv you will struggle to say no to eg nature precedings. I appreciate that it is different but that is not down to a clear principle but a community feeling. Which makes it very hard to base a rule on - Cameron Neylon from fftogo

ResearchBlogging has the potential to become something like a syndication service for science news .. by including pre-prints alongside peer-reviewed you would start to blur the boundaries. - Pedro Beltrao

Pedro, we could do that, but it would involve quite a bit of coding. Adding to the main feed would be simpler. We don't have the resources to make a lot of changes to the basic structure of the site - Dave Munger

I think only if you clearly flag items as "accepted in Arxiv but non-peer-reviewed preprint". Might be a slippery slope. - Richard Akerman

If the arXiv papers are getting accepted by journals, then couldn't you cite the journal as usual, with an inline link to the version on arXiv in the blog post? Like Cameron says, it's a matter of how much emphasis you want to place on the peer-reviewed element. - Alun Salt

Go for it @ ReseachBlogging.org "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail". ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson - Graham Steel

As I've said before, I think you really need to do this if you want participation from the physics community, particularly the theoretical high energy crowd. For them, posting to the arxiv is more or less equivalent to publication, and that's when the interesting discussion and debate occurs. By the time some of these papers appear in a journal, they're considered old news, and no longer worth talking about. - Chad Orzel

There are some parts of arxiv that are worth including, and some that aren't, too. - Mr. Gunn

My $0.02: try to have your cake and eat it. As Chad points out, there's a big community for whom inclusion of arXiv would be useful; as others point out, you risk a slippery slope. So I think Pedro has it right: your best bet is a separate preprint stream, and it might make sense to wait until you have the necessary resources for that. - Bill Hooker

You definitely need to include preprints. By the time an arXiv article is published it is very old news and therefore has become unbloggable. I have never blogged about a published article, but have blogged arXiv articles several times. I think that a different badge for preprints that could be upgraded once the article is published would be the way to go. - Matt Leifer

I think for physicists, allowing it is a no-brainer, but non-physicists won't get it at all - it's not the same as posting an article in another field that's been submitted but word hasn't been received yet. Since majority of users are not physicists, then maybe you have to say only articles that are marked as having been accepted to a journal - Christina Pikas

I've written a post about this here: http://researchblogging.org/news... This is a great discussion, and feel free to continue here -- we'll monitor comments in both places. - Dave Munger