I am interested in knowing about the e-print archive (arXiv.org). What is the purpose of publishing in arXiv.org. Does it have any copyright agreement? If I publish my manuscript in this website, does anyone can take the idea and send it to the peer-reviewed journal for publication?
ArXiv is a forum for exchanging ideas and research results through the posting (and downloading) of technical reports before OR after publication. There are plenty of other such forums, including those that are coupled with a variety of send-lists to subscribers, informing them about new reports posted on the site according to research categories. arXiv typically has a high standard indeed. One way in which it is used is that one would FIRST publish the paper, THEN post an equivalent technical report on ArXiv. But much more often - I think - members post their technical reports BEFORE publication.
One must not be too afraid to share ones result with ones colleagues all over the world, from fear of ideas getting stolen. If that were the case I think we need to ban research seminars completely, and abolish all conferences based on (often) unpublished research. (And that is an environment I will NOT work in.)
To summarize the above, and to be VERY clear about my position: if you are afraid to tell anyone about research of yours that you have not yet published, then you will very quickly become a science eremit. Think of it this way - if you want to live and work in a context where researchers share ideas and thoughts freely, then you cannot - and should not - hide what you do. If you do that your research progress will most certainly decline, because none will want to collaborate with/listen to/share with you.
I hope you will utilize arXiv, because it is an excellent forum.
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