The dissemination and reach of scientific knowledge have increased at a blistering pace. In this context, e-print servers have played a central role by providing scientists with a rapid and open mechanism for disseminating research without having to wait for the (lengthy) peer review process. While helping the scientific community in several ways, e-print servers also provide scientific communicators and the general public with access to a wealth of knowledge without having to pay hefty subscription fees. This motivates us to study how e-prints are positioned within Web community discussions. In this paper, we study data from two Web communities: 14 years of Reddit data and over four years of 4chan's Politically Incorrect board data. Our findings show the presence of e-prints in both science-enthusiast and general-audience communities. We find that real-world events and distinct factors influence the e-prints people's discussions. For instance, there was a surge of COVID-19-related research publications during the early months of the outbreak and a corresponding increase in the number of references to e-prints in online discussions. The similarity measurement result between e-prints and online discussions referencing them has low similarity, which shows that the online discussions are not exclusively talked about the findings in the referred e-prints. Our examination of a sample of threads shows 1) misinterpretation and generalization of research findings, 2) early research findings amplified as a source for future predictions, and 3) questioning findings from a pseudoscientific e-print. Overall, our work highlights the need to quickly and effectively validate non-peer-reviewed e- prints that get substantial press/social media coverage to help mitigate wrongful interpretations of scientific outputs.

翻译：科学知识的传播范围与速度正以惊人步伐加速。在此背景下，电子预印本服务器发挥了核心作用——它为研究人员提供了一种快速开放的成果发布机制，无需等待（漫长的）同行评审过程。电子预印本服务器在多方助力科学界的同时，也使科学传播者及普通公众无需支付高昂订阅费用即可获取海量知识。这促使我们研究电子预印本在Web社区讨论中的定位。本文研究了两类Web社区数据：跨越14年的Reddit数据与超过4年的4chan政治不正确板块数据。研究结果表明，电子预印本既存在于科学爱好者社区，也存在于普通受众社区。我们发现现实事件与不同因素会影响人们对电子预印本的讨论内容。例如，新冠疫情爆发初期，相关研究文献激增，网络讨论中提及电子预印本的频次也相应增加。电子预印本与引用它的网络讨论之间的相似度测量结果显示两者关联度较低，表明网络讨论并非完全围绕所引电子预印本的发现展开。通过对样本帖子的分析，我们发现了三类现象：1）研究发现的误读与泛化；2）早期研究结果被放大为预测未来的依据；3）对伪科学电子预印本发现提出的质疑。总体而言，本研究凸显了需快速有效验证获得大量媒体/社交网络报道的非同行评审电子预印本，以帮助减少对科学产出的错误解读。