Estimating the Causal Effect of Early ArXiving on Paper Acceptance

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Elazar, Yanai, Zhang, Jiayao, Wadden, David, Zhang, Bo, Smith, Noah A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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_version_ 1866914685283991552
author Elazar, Yanai
Zhang, Jiayao
Wadden, David
Zhang, Bo
Smith, Noah A.
author_facet Elazar, Yanai
Zhang, Jiayao
Wadden, David
Zhang, Bo
Smith, Noah A.
contents What is the effect of releasing a preprint of a paper before it is submitted for peer review? No randomized controlled trial has been conducted, so we turn to observational data to answer this question. We use data from the ICLR conference (2018--2022) and apply methods from causal inference to estimate the effect of arXiving a paper before the reviewing period (early arXiving) on its acceptance to the conference. Adjusting for confounders such as topic, authors, and quality, we may estimate the causal effect. However, since quality is a challenging construct to estimate, we use the negative outcome control method, using paper citation count as a control variable to debias the quality confounding effect. Our results suggest that early arXiving may have a small effect on a paper's chances of acceptance. However, this effect (when existing) does not differ significantly across different groups of authors, as grouped by author citation count and institute rank. This suggests that early arXiving does not provide an advantage to any particular group.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_13891
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating the Causal Effect of Early ArXiving on Paper Acceptance
Elazar, Yanai
Zhang, Jiayao
Wadden, David
Zhang, Bo
Smith, Noah A.
Computation and Language
What is the effect of releasing a preprint of a paper before it is submitted for peer review? No randomized controlled trial has been conducted, so we turn to observational data to answer this question. We use data from the ICLR conference (2018--2022) and apply methods from causal inference to estimate the effect of arXiving a paper before the reviewing period (early arXiving) on its acceptance to the conference. Adjusting for confounders such as topic, authors, and quality, we may estimate the causal effect. However, since quality is a challenging construct to estimate, we use the negative outcome control method, using paper citation count as a control variable to debias the quality confounding effect. Our results suggest that early arXiving may have a small effect on a paper's chances of acceptance. However, this effect (when existing) does not differ significantly across different groups of authors, as grouped by author citation count and institute rank. This suggests that early arXiving does not provide an advantage to any particular group.
title Estimating the Causal Effect of Early ArXiving on Paper Acceptance
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.13891