Re: BBC cites a preprint from arXiv

From: Leslie Carr <lac_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 15:35:51 +0100

Usually it's New Scientist that picks these stories up (they have
grown-up physicists working for them), and indeed the BBC ran a story
based on an arxiv preprint (hep-th/0501068) in March 2005(http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4357613.stm) . So it's not the first,
but I can't find any other examples.

Paul Rincon, the journalist who produced this story, has about 22
stories based on Nature articles and 10 based on Science (if you take
the results of a Google search for "site:news.bbc.co.uk Paul-Rincon
journal-Nature").

---
Les Carr
On 23 May 2005, at 22:03, Eric F. Van de Velde wrote:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4564477.stm
>
> Is this a first? I.e., a major news organization uses unrefereed
> self-archived preprint as the basis of a news story. Although not a
> major hard-news story, it was posted on the main page of the BBC
> news web site. Does this point to the growing acceptance of Open
> Archives and/or of arXiv? Does it point to a growing disregard for
> peer review (at least, outside of the academy)?
>
> --Eric Van de Velde, Caltech.
>
>
>

Received on Tue May 24 2005 - 15:35:51 BST