Over at his blog, Ethan White has a good recap of the whole ESA not accepting manuscripts that are on arXiv or other preprint servers. Worth checking out for the full story. ESA has now changed their policy to state:
“Likewise, if a manuscript is posted in a citable public archive outside the author’s home institution, then we consider the paper to be self-published and ineligible for submission to ESA journals.”
UPDATE in 8/2012 – From talking to several members of the ESA publications committee, it looks like this will change. A formal vote is needed, and will happen soon – so stay tuned!