Structure and philosophy with Physics journals?

[fredrik]

I have a question for those on here have experience with dealing with publications.

 

First there seems to be several uses for the various journals and archives. I assume the more important part is that anyone who is interested can find the papers. And in each papers sufficient information exists if the author needs to be contacted. The second is the research funding systems and so on.

 

I have noticed that there is alot of journals and archives out there, some journals for some reason sell the articles. I don't know if the money is for paying the peer reviewers or if it is simply business? Anyway, there are both free and non-free journals. Reviewed and non-reviewed. I also notice that many journals want exclusive rights, and don't want to publish something that anothe journal does - why?

 

Is there no kind of "master archive" or something, or link archive?

 

What is the general reasoning when submitting papers for publishing? Try the most popular journals first (that funders look for) or the journals that has most viewers?

 

I have no experience with this, so that is why I ask. I recall this same thing in other disiplines where papers are often treated as products they want to sell. What is the idea behind this?

 

Can someone help me separate the practical sense here from the commercial and research political interests?

 

I notive also that some journals are farily expensive to subscribe to? How should I interpret that?

 

What journals are most commonly used and "serious" in the theoretical physics, quantum physics, relativity world and why? Suppose I want to scan the field... then there seems to be a mess of journals and stuff to go through. Is that the normal procedure, or is there a clever system?

 

/Fredrik

[swansont]

Within physics, and I assume this is true eleswhere, there is a hierarchy of journals. The more prestigious ones require research that is more cutting-edge, with significant results. Within a given sub-field, people generally come to know what this is. I can give you an example from my own experience — trapping radioactive atoms garnered a few publications in Physical Review Letters, which is the top physics publication (but lower overall than Science or Nature, and above Physical Review A, B, C, D), but only the first few groups to do this. Subsequent efforts simply weren't noteworthy enough (the effort with which I was involved got a PRL, but probably only because we actually made a measurement of the isotope shift of the trapped atoms. I don't think there were any subsequent "we trapped radioactives!" articles in PRL). Another article on how we transferred atoms from one trap to another wasn't the novel kind of result, but was different (and in some ways better) than other methods. That was published in The Journal of the Optical Society of America B, though there were one or two other journals where it would have been appropriate, for both the subject matter and level of experiment.

 

The paper journals charge because it costs money to publish, and with relatively low volume, there is not the opportunity to distribute the overhead. And no advertising in many journals, so you are paying the actual cost. All-electronic journals/archives have a different cost structure.

 

Reviewers don't actually work for the journals, AFAIK. It's a courtesy done by the researchers. You review papers so that others will review yours.

[fredrik]

Thanks,

 

How about some free electronic archives? Say ArXiv? Does the presence of a papter their usually imply it is not in any other journal? Or can it be at both places? Do you usually send papers to all journals, or do you pick the "best" where you think you have a reasonable chance?

 

And regardless of the prestige, is there no sort of archive or anything were people routinely send copies of papers regardless of wether they is published elsewhere or not? ArXiv is simple, easy and accesable, but I assume only a fraction of papers go there?

 

Btw, I really enjoyed your cartoons!

 

/Fredrik

[fredrik]

Who own's or administrates the big journals? If it's not straight "commercial companies", are they owned like by universities or research organisations?

 

/Fredrik

[swansont]

Many journals are published by organizations made up of the scientists that tend to read them. The American Physical Society publishes PRL and the various Physical Review journals, as well as Reviews of Modern Physics and a few others. The Optical Society of America publishes JOSA A and B, Applied Optics, Optics Letters, and several more. (to name two journal groups I talked about before). They (and other science/engineering societies) also organize conferences for their constituents.

 

ArXiv is not peer-reviewed, so one has to treat material there accordingly. One cannot always tell the material that is posted as a pre-print, but will be peer-reviewed and published, from material that will not, and is overly speculative or flat-out wrong.

 

The quality of peer review tends to correlate with the prestige of the journal, and I'm not sure which is the driving force. I imagine they induce each other, and prestigous journals are helped by being the old journals still around from the days when there weren't nearly as many. One can imagine that newer journals popped up to fill niches and catch the overflow, which lowers their status a notch right off the bat.

 

The procedure is usually (based on my own very limited experience) to identify what journal you think is appropriate. You shoot high, if there's any question, and if the journal thinks it is not appropriate for their journal, they will tell you (they have an editorial staff that has technical expertise, though that's separate from the peer review) and you go for the next one down the chain. What it costs you is a little bit of time (and the possibility of angering someone if you do it repeatedly). But you do it one at a time.

 

Authors will typically make their papers available if they can. In the past it was common practice to have preprint and reprint copies (the latter of which you had printed up when the paper was accepted, for which you have to pay the journal) and people would mail you and ask for a copy. Nowadays that's mostly electronic. If you go to a research group's (or professor's) web page, they will often link to many of their papers as downloadable documents

[fredrik]

Thanks for your insight.

 

Am I right in my impression that some papers take over the copyright? So that once published you can't publish it elsewhere because you have "given away" the copyright? Is that never a problem?

 

/Fredrik

[swansont]

Thanks for your insight.

 

Am I right in my impression that some papers take over the copyright? So that once published you can't publish it elsewhere because you have "given away" the copyright? Is that never a problem?

 

/Fredrik

 

Yes, you usually sign away your copyright, if it exists. (US government work, for example, is not subject to copyright protection). Which is why sometimes an author may not be able to freely distribute a paper. But there's a whole lot of "fair use" involved; you can go to the library and copy the article, so there's usually no reason not to distribute it.

[fredrik]

Swanson, I keep noticing that some authors on their personal sites have links both to the journals where their articles have been published (for example the physical review A) on which links you can purchase the pdf article from physical review journals. On the same page the author have a link to arXiv where the same paper can be downloaded freely. Is this technically a violation of the "signed away copyright" or is it part of the "fair use" you talk about?

 

/Fredrik