Standard practice when merging papers on arxiv

Question

I and another author have decided to merge our manuscripts into one paper. Both of us have already put preprints on arxiv. How should we handle the merging on arxiv? Is there a standard practice?

I can think of three options:

1. Create a new submission for the merged paper.
2. Upload the merged paper as a revision of both of the original preprints.
3. Withdraw one of the original preprints and upload the merged paper as a revision to the other.

I worry that option 1 might look like we are spamming arxiv by uploading three papers when we really should only have uploaded one. Option 2 is undesirable because then there are two versions of the exact same paper on arxiv. Option 3 is asymmetric.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Answer 1

Option 1 should be fine if you add appropriate comments and withdraw old papers.

Here is how we did it recently:

• http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04963 (merger)
• http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2109 (withdrawn)
• http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2667 (withdrawn)

In the merged paper, it is important to add a comment; otherwise you will probably trigger https://arxiv.org/help/overlap