Understanding the Use of e-Prints on Reddit and 4chan's Politically Incorrect Board

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.