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When someone develops a new theory on physics, which is barely on schetch (so there are no measurements, nor simulations) with just a mathematical and conceptual description, in which scientific journals people use to publish these theories?

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closed as off topic by Manishearth♦ Dec 17 '12 at 21:12

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3 Answers

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Can you please elaborate a bit more your question? In what domain of physics? I guess that you are thinking about Mathematical Physics journals (Journal of Mathematical Physics or Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical for instance). Also journals of the American Physical Society accept this kind of papers but what journal depends on the domain we are talking about...).

Cheers,

D.

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I meant really not a specific domain. But good to know this. Thank you. – Rego Mar 4 '12 at 16:24
It makes more sense to keep this as a comment, not an answer. – Manishearth♦ Mar 5 '12 at 9:30
up vote 2 down vote

If it is only in a very conceptual stage it might be quite tough to pass peer review. Why not try it with the arxiv preprint archive first? It's out and published and you can still submit to a regular journal later.

For groundbreaking ideas you can try any journal of course, today with the more online-oriented publishing style it is even ok to submit a short article to a high class journal and put details and calculations in the arbitrary long supplemental material.

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@Downvoter: Care to explain what is wrong here? – Alexander Mar 4 '12 at 15:06
Thank you. Your answer sure help me (I think very ilogical someone who gave the downvote, since your answer is totally related to the matter, but you sure have my up vote - I hope the downvoter changes idea.) – Rego Mar 4 '12 at 16:22
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PRL (http://prl.aps.org/) would be Ok. You do not need measurements nor simulations to publish theoretical paper. Of course you have to convince referees that it is worth to be published.

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Ok. Thank you so much. – Rego Mar 4 '12 at 16:25
2  
@Rego: Note that PRL is a premier and very competitive journal (though the short maximum length and rapid publication schedule takes some of the pressure off). I'd go so far as to worry that if you didn't know it was there, you're likely to have a hard time stating the paper in a way that will get accepted there. – dmckee♦ Mar 4 '12 at 18:28
@dmckee There is always trade-off between easy publishing and guarantee that somebody will read the paper. For PRL you may be 100% sure that the paper will be read. – Misha Mar 4 '12 at 18:58

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