[chc]

Given how important this would be, it seems a bit odd that she just threw it on ArXiv rather than having it peer-reviewed. Also, the press release's explanation of what Hawking radiation is sounds strange to me, though I'm not an astrophysicist. It all makes me very hesitant to put any stock in this right now (well, at least it in meaning what's suggested here).

[orbifold]

In theoretical physics all papers important or not are submitted as preprints to ArXiv and then prepared for publication, an informal system like that has been in place during all of modern science, only that before the internet professors send a number of copies of their latest result to collaborators and to people they thought might be interested in them. I think this is much nicer than the alternative, that important results are only circulated in small circles and "milked dry" until they are released to the public.

[Stwerp]

I understood that it was common to post the paper to arxiv when it was in the process of being peer reviewed by a journal. The problem is the extended lag time between submission and final publication with most journals which pre-print archives like arxiv try to solve. Do people really just "submit to arxiv" and then that it? I didn't know that, but its not common in my field to use arxiv so I have not kept up with all practices.

[tjradcliffe]

There have been cases where arxiv has been used as a venue of final publication, but the general intent is that stuff submitted there will eventually find a home in the peer-reviewed literature. There are sometimes exchanges of arguments there that never make it to prime-time, but that's not the dominant use-case.

The reality is, though, that people working in a given field are much more likely to use the arxiv version as the basis for further work, simply because it is available so much earlier. It is not uncommon to reach the point of publication and then run around to try and find out where all the arxiv submissions you used were published, which can sometimes be challenging.

[sampo]

> Do people really just "submit to arxiv" and then that it?

Some people do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman

[timClicks]

The ArXiV is how you get your work peer-reviewed in cosmology and other areas. Findings can be examined much more quickly than the normal publication cycle.