In June of 1905, when he submitted “The electrodynamics of moving bodies”, he had a PhD in physics and had already published several papers in the same journal. He didn’t hold a university post, but he very much a member in good standing of the physics community. I don’t see why somebody in an analogous post today would have trouble publishing papers.
The lack of citations is interesting, but I think you’re reading too much into it. It shows that scientific publication norms have changed since 1905, but it’s not as though Einstein would have been unable to add the appropriate references if the journal had expected it. You might equally well say “the paper couldn’t be published today because it’s in German, not English”.
Einstein’s world changing paper, “The electrodynamics of moving bodies” would not be publishable today. He was not an academic, his paper lacked citations, and so on and so forth
In June of 1905, when he submitted “The electrodynamics of moving bodies”, he had a PhD in physics and had already published several papers in the same journal
Many of which would also be unpublishable today.
it’s not as though Einstein would have been unable to add the appropriate references if the journal had expected it.
The references are so that the editor knows where to send it for peer review and to reference the existing consensus to demonstrate orthodoxy.
Galileo ridiculed what we now call peer review as a team of carthorses.
The effect of peer review is to discover truth through authority, orthodoxy and consensus, without the slow, tedious, and inconvenient necessity of examining the world—and that is why “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” would today be unpublishable.
In June of 1905, when he submitted “The electrodynamics of moving bodies”, he had a PhD in physics and had already published several papers in the same journal. He didn’t hold a university post, but he very much a member in good standing of the physics community. I don’t see why somebody in an analogous post today would have trouble publishing papers.
The lack of citations is interesting, but I think you’re reading too much into it. It shows that scientific publication norms have changed since 1905, but it’s not as though Einstein would have been unable to add the appropriate references if the journal had expected it. You might equally well say “the paper couldn’t be published today because it’s in German, not English”.
[See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_publications_by_Albert_Einstein and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Academic_career ]
Many of which would also be unpublishable today.
The references are so that the editor knows where to send it for peer review and to reference the existing consensus to demonstrate orthodoxy.
Galileo ridiculed what we now call peer review as a team of carthorses.
The effect of peer review is to discover truth through authority, orthodoxy and consensus, without the slow, tedious, and inconvenient necessity of examining the world—and that is why “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” would today be unpublishable.