"Everyone Else Does It": The Rise of Preprinting Culture in Computing Disciplines

TL;DR

This paper explores the growing preprinting culture in computing disciplines like AI and HCI, highlighting motivations, perceptions, and its role in shaping the publication ecosystem through interviews with academics.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into the community-driven motivations behind preprinting and discusses its impact on traditional publication practices in computing fields.

Findings

Preprinting is linked to field characteristics like high publication volume and competitiveness.

Participants see preprinting as a solution to scooping and peer review issues.

Preprinting challenges traditional publication norms and suggests a need for ecosystem reform.

Abstract

Preprinting has become a norm in fast-paced computing fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and human-computer interaction (HCI). In this paper, we conducted semistructured interviews with 15 academics in these fields to reveal their motivations and perceptions of preprinting. The results found a close relationship between preprinting and characteristics of the fields, including the huge number of papers, competitiveness in career advancement, prevalence of scooping, and imperfect peer review system - preprinting comes to the rescue in one way or another for the participants. Based on the results, we reflect on the role of preprinting in subverting the traditional publication mode and outline possibilities of a better publication ecosystem. Our study contributes by inspecting the community aspects of preprinting practices through talking to academics.