Mike Taylor wrote up a post about the various things a journal article is doing, the first being a scientific report . We put a lot of money in establishing a scientific track record. In the past 30 years how we publish our research and how we archive it has changed significantly. If you read my blog more often, you know I have been critical of the performance of many publishers.
Egon Willighagen (Wed,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: