Peer Review Journals: How Do They Work Today?

[εllipse]

Excuse the lay question, but how do peer review journals work these days, with the advent of the internet? I've seen people post arxiv articles; is that peer reviewed? Are there any worth subscribing to? Which ones are considered the most professional?

 

[inha]

Arxiv is not peer reviewed like prl, nature or any other journal. It's a preprint archive for articles that are either going to be published or the authors hope to be published. The major journals are nature and science. Only major discoveries are reported in those and they are interdisciplinary journals. PRL is probably the most prestigeous physics only journal. Then there are tons of less or more focused journals that concentrate on a few or even only one subject.

I don't think it's worth it to subscribe to any. If you're at an university you can read the journals there or if you work on the subject your employer probably has them subscribed. And in most other cases you won't be able to understand the articles anyway.