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[Note In the discussion that follows, "red-links" means citation links
from a citing paper in LANL to the cited paper's LANL pre-print
reference number (e.g.hep-th/9906001, may or may not also contain
published data) For a demo,see :
http://arabica.ecs.soton.ac.uk/demo.html
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Excerpt from:
http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-8/p35.html
"Some of my colleagues in Santa Barbara--the string theorists, for
example, and several of my coworkers in condensed matter theory as
well--insist that they don't need The Physical Review. For research
purposes, they don't need refereed print journals at all. They are
producing remarkable results this way, so I take them very
seriously."
"What they are doing is using the Los Alamos e-print archive for
all of their research communications. They check it every day for
new information. They post all their papers there, cite references
by archive number, use the search engine to find other papers, and
need little or no other publication services."
I don't know whether "string theory" is hep-th, but it would look like a
credible explanation why hep-th has such high "hits" for red-links,
compared to hep-ph (which is a area of similar size and lineage).
Perhaps this is a rule that can be extended to all theoretical science -
that theory does not demand the same level of "invisible hand" rigure as
more practical research.
Tim Brody
Computer Science, University of Southampton
email: tdb198_at_soton.ac.uk
Web:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~tdb198/
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT