Re: Sci Journals, authors, internet
T.C. May writes:
Anyone here who has not already done so should immediately type "xxx.lanl.gov" into their browser. (No, the "xxx" is not a typo, nor is it a porn site.)
This is where physics papers are getting published. The print journals are surviving, barely, but I think the handwriting is already on the wall. As libraries balk at paying $6000 per year for "Journal of Advanced Aptical Foddering" and as the referee system goes online as well (*), the print journals will financially fail. Maybe no one will notice.
As John Baez has pointed out, most of the grad students he deals with never visit the campus library. All papers of interest in cosmology, quantum physics, solid state, etc. are being published on the arXhive sites. In the last few months, I've been using this system extensively, and have downloaded about 2500 pages of PDF files. I know how many pages because I've printed out most of the papers. Five reams of paper later....
Brilliant suggestion as usual. This completely un-edited, un-reviewed archive site accepts submissions from anyone in the world. One might as well learn physics from Jim Choate. I wonder if Tim May's extensive archive of printed papers includes such gems as these from xxx.lanl.gov: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0205055 This one explains that general relativity is all wrong to attribute gravity to curved spacetime, and cosmological red-shift to expansion. It shows how to get these effects from a flat spacetime geometry. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0204008 "We found a fundamental principle, the law of statistical balance in nature, that specifies quantum statistical theory among all other statistical theories of measurements. This principle plays in quantum theory the role that is similar to the role of Einstein's relativity principle." http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0201115 This astonishing paper tells what happens before the Big Bang. During the pre-universe the vacuum evolves through four stages before producing the universe we see. "The periodic table of elementary particles is constructed to account for all elementary particles and their masses in a good agreement with the observed values." This is the holy grail of modern physics - a theory that explains the subatomic particle zoo! Definitely a must-have for Tim May's collection. Clearly every one of these results would be shattering to the modern physics paradigm, if true. Tim May's advice puts readers at risk of accepting the most absurd theories without any way of evaluating their accuracy. There is a reason why the peer review process and the academic journals are still needed. Online preprint archives are useless for the layman. Only experts can use these archives with safety; they are able to sift the wheat from the chaff. As usual, readers are cautioned to take Tim May's "brilliant insights" with a very generous grain of salt.
On Wednesday, June 12, 2002, at 10:04 AM, Anonymous wrote:
T.C. May writes:
Anyone here who has not already done so should immediately type "xxx.lanl.gov" into their browser. (No, the "xxx" is not a typo, nor is it a porn site.)
This is where physics papers are getting published. The print journals are surviving, barely, but I think the handwriting is already on the wall. As libraries balk at paying $6000 per year for "Journal of Advanced Aptical Foddering" and as the referee system goes online as well (*), the print journals will financially fail. Maybe no one will notice.
As John Baez has pointed out, most of the grad students he deals with never visit the campus library. All papers of interest in cosmology, quantum physics, solid state, etc. are being published on the arXhive sites. In the last few months, I've been using this system extensively, and have downloaded about 2500 pages of PDF files. I know how many pages because I've printed out most of the papers. Five reams of paper later....
Brilliant suggestion as usual. This completely un-edited, un-reviewed archive site accepts submissions from anyone in the world.
No, it does not.
As usual, readers are cautioned to take Tim May's "brilliant insights" with a very generous grain of salt.
As usual, "Anonymous" is careless in his claims.
--Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001
On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Anonymous wrote:
There is a reason why the peer review process and the academic journals are still needed. Online preprint archives are useless for the layman.
Laymen don't read online preprint archives. They stick with popular science stuff (I read Science). If you're even marginally competent the kooks have a telltale signature, allowing you to filter out 90% of kook science with a cursory glance. Names-based reputation is prevalent (I guess no one has yet bothered to fake submissions often enough so that people use digital signatures to authenticate authors of submitted papers) and seems to work. Typically everybody knows everybody else in a small speciality, and newcomers are very visible as such. They either rapidly establish a reputation track as valuable contributors, or fail to do so. Informally, that distributed database seems to work well. It is very easy to offer a for-profit peer review service of arXiv.org, btw (just offer a number of arXiv links digitally signed to your identity to paid subscribers). It's just there is not a market for it still, because the dead tree media are hogging the ecological niche for it, having been there first. You need a reputation track before people come to you, and you only get a reputation track if people come to you.
Only experts can use these archives with safety; they are able to sift the wheat from the chaff.
participants (3)
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Tim May