Physics Publication Process

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jake2

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  1. Attending Physician
Hi,

My post-doc and I have recently discovered that some of our research has implications in theoretical physics (enzyme kinetics->entropy calculations->mathematical physics, sound odd but gets some neat stuff out of it), and would like to publish the work in a theoretical physics journal. However, neither of us are quite sure how the publication process in physics works, and I figure, since I have some time before we start working on such a paper, before I go making a jackass out of myself by walking up to a random physics professor to take up his time asking stupid questions, I might ask them an this nice annonymous online forum first.🙂 (Yeah, I know most of you guys, like me, work in biology related fields, but I don't know of any other forum to turn to and who knows, maybe there is somebody here who is a theoretical physics researcher or has heard rumors about these sorts of things.)

Does anybody know what the timeline for the mathematical/theoretical physics review process? Is it typically a couple of months like in biology or years as I've heard can be the case for mathematics papers? Is it customary to put out a pre-print on a server like arxiv, or is that the exception rather than the rule? If it is the usually done, how long is a pre-print usually kept up before submission? What are some of the harder/easier journals to get published to get published in? (Or phrased differently, what are some of the higher/lower impact journals? I can find a whole bunch on science web, but can't find impact factors for most of them.) Is this a field where a paper can only get published if a big name is attached to it? Is this an area like economics where a paper is presented for years at conferences before published?

Answers to any of the above questions would be greatly appreciated. Failing that, any pointers to other forums where I could ask these questions would be equally appreciated.
 
Jake,

I'm not sure whether or not your work has an bio-application, or if pure Physics journals are different from biophysical journals. That being said, I just recently had a paper accepted by Biophysical Journal (heavily physics intensive in the paper, but with biology application). We submitted the paper for review in early Oct. and we heard back from them about a month later. As far as I know, when the paper is finally ready for publication, it will be available for preprint online, and this tends to be the norm.

If this doesn't help you, let me know, I have a coupel other people I can ask here about pure mathematical/physics journals. We have a couple folks in our lab who do theoretical math stuff.

Good luck!!
 
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