Yes, they are normal... but they also aren't even peer-reviewed yet.

Ergo, you can treat it as more significant than a random physics crank posting on his blog, but not as trustworthy as something that has in fact been properly vetted.

At least in my field, there is an option during journal submission to submit your work automatically to a similar archive.

>> ArXiv pre-prints are pretty normal in physics and math.

Correct, and they are usually followed up by a published, peer-reviewed paper as well. I look forward to the day this one also gets reviewed and published.

Higgs boson discovery pre-print: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7214 Higgs boson discovery paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026931...

It's essentially the same text.

>> BTW, Krasznahorkay is a highly-cited researchers.

Great

It’s actually two Krasznahorkays on this paper. I know one of them, and he’s very thorough.

Seconded. We treated ArXiv pre-prints incredibly seriously and only posted things when they were already in review/scheduled to be published.