Talk:Ruyangosaurus

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Borophagus in topic Ruyangosaurus preprint?

Ruyangosaurus preprint? edit

There's a preprint of a 2017 paper (unpublished) about this taxon, including several phylogenetic trees[1]. Should this be noted anywhere in the article, or should we wait until it is formally published (if this happens at all)? I think it should probably wait until publication, but what do you guys think? And in case information from the article does get added, it's a PeerJ preprint. Borophagus (talk) 09:47, 3 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

My reading of Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources suggests that unreviewed preprints should be treated as self-published sources, which are generally not considered reliable. Furthermore, since no published version of the preprint has arisen over the last four years it is entirely possible that the article was rejected in peer review, assuming the authors ever sought peer review in the first place. Additionally, you may note that there are a few negative comments on the preprint; in particular, this preprint did not take into account a large number of referred specimens of Ruyangosaurus, so it was working with outdated information to begin with, and the phylogenetic analysis contains multiple errors. Full disclosure, I am one of the people who left a negative comment on this preprint. All in all, this preprint is a flawed analysis using outdated information that has not been reviewed or formally published—hardly something I would consider worthy of mention in a Wikipedia article. We'll just have to see if this ever gets revised and peer-reviewed. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:43, 4 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Understood. I honestly hadn't noticed the comments (I should check next time). Thanks! Borophagus (talk) 09:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)Reply