- A paper is a final output from a scientist which is reviewed by other people. His findings can provide insights into a topic which can extend the human’s knowledge.
- A pull request is also a final output of a developer’s code work which is reviewed by a peer developer. When a PR is merged, it can extend the application’s functionality.
- Usually pull requests reviews are not as strict as scientific paper reviews.
- There is a correlation between the number of pull requests and developer productivity, but it is not a one-to-one mapping.
- Pull requests can be hard to implement, so some of them take more time than others.
- The same is true for science papers: some research is harder to do than others.