The Weird Science of Tossing Stones Into a Lake 89
Interoperable writes "Researchers in Spain and the Netherlands add another piece to a centuries-old puzzle in physics: the dynamics of an object falling into water. This common occurrence has a complex anatomy that includes a thin 'crown splash' around the perimeter of the impact, a deep cavity of air following the impactor, and a high, narrow jet of water that results from the collapse of the cavity. The new research, recently published in Physical Review Letters, demonstrates that airflow through the neck of the collapsing cavity reaches supersonic speeds despite low relative pressures between the air in the cavity and ambient pressure. Such an effect has no analogue in aerospace engineering or other sciences because of the highly dynamic nature of the collapsing nozzle structure." It's funny that the APS wants to charge non-subscribers $25 to download what is available for free on the arXiv.
How ARXIV and PRL work together (Score:5, Informative)
Just some pieces of info for people who might not know:
Nowadays, all the major publishers dont have an issue if you post a prepring on arxiv, prl included.
If you want to get a preprint out, the procedure is as follows:
1) You put something on arxiv and submit it to PRL. /etc.
2) After a few weeks/months, you get your referee reports.
3) Then you revise it, and update your arxiv version.
4) Paper gets accepted. Paper is entering the editorial process, and you get proofs.
-> at this point, APS has contributed to the paper. The specific version proofed by PRL can no longer be uploaded to ARXIV
5) Final corrections, ready to print.
Nowadays, the proof and setting part is relatively minor. Most likely you will have written it in RevTex, and have PDF figures, so its an no issue.
But they still allow you to send them the text in word and the figures in phyical form (ink drawing, whatever), if you are really interested in it not getting published quickly.
So for most issues, a paper on Arxiv might be 99.9% identical to the final published paper, and only diiffer by the editorial issues. But you cannot know it. It might also represent a state from before the peer review.
Re:How ARXIV and PRL work together (Score:4, Informative)
Nowadays, all the major publishers dont have an issue if you post a prepring on arxiv, prl included.
True in some fields, but not all. The two biggest chemistry journals, Angewandte Chemie and Journal of the American Chemical Society, both do not allow submission of communications for which preprints have been released. One also can't submit it elsewhere at the same time. (One can, though, submit a paper to either journal after another journal has already declined to publish it.) As for the major multidisplinary journals, Nature allows publication of preprints. Science does not.
See APS Physics viewpoint on the subject for more. (Score:2, Informative)