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Comment by bitcharmer | Hacker News Reader

Since this topic is likely to garner people who do or use research I hope to find an answer to the burning question of why on Earth don't researchers put a freaking publication year in their paper. Sometimes it's virtually impossible to learn if the paper is 20- or 2-years old. For something that matters quite a lot I always find this "tradition" a bit nonsensical.

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I don't know, but usually searching for the paper title online, e.g. in google scholar or (for CS papers) on dblp, will turn up the venue where it's published, including publication date. In fact, if it's in dblp, it will show the year right on the results page.

Thank you for replying but it still doesn't explain this bizarre practice.

One reason is the lag between a paper being "online first" vs. being included in an issue. I've seen as much as three years (paper published in its accepted form in 2017 but not included in an issue till 2020).

How can the researchers be 100% sure in what year the paper will get published? I imagine that at best they could put the year of submission into the paper, but that's about it.

You mean in a preprint or something? Because in any published version, of course, the year is right there.

I've never seen a date on a single academic paper available online (ie. from arxiv)

I have, quite often. But, for example on arxiv, the date is on the page that lists papers and that has the links to the various versions of the paper. And, in case the author has neglected to include the date in the PDF, arxiv adds the date, embedded in the PDF, vertically at the left of the first page.

Added: But you’re right that authors often neglect to include date on the the manuscript or preprint versions, and this is a problem. I guess because journals often don’t want this, as they will add the submission and publication dates.

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