Is anyone else really bothered by the fact that academics don't put dates on their papers? This could have been written yesterday. It could have been written 10 years ago. How can I know?

I get this is not yet peer reviewed, but put a date on it that represents the last time it was touched. Like a last modified date or something. And it's not like it will get a date on it once it is peer reviewed. Someone will find it 5 years from now and think it still represents the state of the art.

Yes, I also find it extremely annoying and it’s definitely a thing. I always end up googling the title to find the actual publication and hope that the date is there.

Does anyone know why academic papers do not include dates in the paper? Surely there must be a reason?

Edit: StackExchange [0] cites uncertainty of the delay between writing and publication as the typical reason for omitting the date. This seems fair, but at least including the year would be nice. If you submit for review at the end of the year, probably safe to increment it by one. Even so, presumably there might be later drafts after review, so those should include the date.

[0] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/why-is-the...

Mostly because they get published in conferences and journals and that represents the timestamp. I agree it's an issue for papers that are provided without wider context but in 99% of cases, I find that on the appropriate site (homepage of the academic who wrote it or conference page) the venue and date of publication are included.

Why not add a writing date, and once its published add the publication date?

No reason not to, I just think most people don't do it out of habit. Academics are beginning to use arxiv more seriously and that provides versioned timestamp functionality.

Creation date on the PDF is 6 Nov 2009 - so not too far off with your '10 years ago' concern.

Thanks! We've updated the title.

Generally, papers are published in conference proceedings or journals. Just look it up on Google and you will find the publication it belongs to, with the date: Volume 40 Issue 1, January 2010 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1672313

From the HTTP response headers:

Last-Modified: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:21:44 GMT

Since this paper is so old, it should have the date in the title (2009 I guess).