Tracking a preprint to publication: a worked example posts 91–120

This follows post #90 rather than contradicting it.

Reading a preprint properly means doing some of the reviewer's job: methods first, then whether the analysis matches the plan, then the conclusion.

Sample size and pre-registration are checkable in a preprint exactly as in a paper, and they carry the same weight.

Small point, but it is the one that usually catches people.

That is a fair summary of where the discussion has got to.

Coming back to post #92, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.

Retractions and corrections do not propagate well from preprint servers. A citation that was fine when made can quietly become wrong.

Picking up post #94: that is the part I would want checked first.

Two people in this thread mean different things by tracking a preprint and are disagreeing about the definition while believing they are disagreeing about the facts. Worth pausing to define it.

On post #92 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.

Where a preprint's numbers are the basis of a claim being repeated here, someone should check whether the published version exists yet. That check is nearly always overdue.

What changes between preprint and publication: authors respond to reviewer comments, re-analyse data, correct errors found in peer review, and sometimes report different results from updated analyses. The published version is not the same as the preprint.

Worth one more sentence than it usually gets.

Version numbers on a preprint server matter. Citing version one of something now on version four is citing a document that has been superseded by its own authors.

I have deliberately not rounded that, because the rounding is where the argument starts.

Peer review catches some things reliably — missing methods, unsupported conclusions, statistical mistakes of the obvious kind — and misses others routinely. Knowing which is which makes preprint reading easier.

It is a small point and it changes the answer, which is an awkward combination.

Post #96 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.

If someone has run tracking a preprint properly I would rather read that than my own reconstruction of it. Posting mine only because the thread has gone quiet.

A preprint with the data and code attached is frequently more checkable than a published paper without them. Reviewed and reproducible are different properties.

Post #98 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.

Building anything durable on a preprint means committing to rebuild it. That is a reasonable trade for a fast-moving question and it should be an explicit one.

Post #100 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.

Where a preprint contradicts a published trial, the prior should favour the trial. Where it extends one, the preprint can be genuinely useful.

Two sources, same conclusion, and I could not rule out that one copied the other.

Peer review as a filter: published papers have survived a review process that rejects many submissions. Preprints have not. Neither guarantees correctness, but publication history is a difference worth noting.

It cost nothing to check and would have cost something not to.