On peer review and paper preprint dissemination

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I have recently come across two great pieces:

Professor Larry Wasserman and Walter Noll suggests a simple two-tier publishing system.

CERN physicists show statistics on the viability of arXiv in High Energy Physics (HEP) research, where they found the following:

  • as of 2008, more than 95% of the peer-reviewed HEP journal articles are also published on the arXiv,
  • the highest impact factor articles are both submitted to a journal and published on arXiv,
  • articles that are submitted to arXiv before review obtain 20% of their first 2-year citation count by the time the journal article is accepted, and they also enjoy more than five times as many citations during this 2-year period,
  • scientists read the arXiv more often than journal websites.

Physicists have been doing this for more than two decades now. If we are to improve our publishing system in computer graphics research, this is definitely a promising direction. Why don’t we?

Image-free computer graphics

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Eugene d’Eon, one of the most influential and prolific authors in subsurface light transport research states an indeed very interesting and thought-provoking thought in his review of the Photon Beam Diffusion paper:

“It seems unclear to me that graphics papers like this one need images anymore. Carefully presented plots do much more to convince the reader of the accuracy of the proposed transport theory approximations. Showing selected results where a half-space searchlight solution is applied approximately to curved geometry, while pretty, does little to convince the reader of the method’s overall robustness.”

Just keep it nice and mathematical: if you have the plots of the convolution kernel you are using for rendering images, that is basically all you need to show – for rendered images, one can find an angle and a lighting setup where any possible algorithm can come out on top. If we wish to call computer graphics research scientific, it is definitely an argument that I find worthy of some discussion.

Progress on Navier-Stokes regularity

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To the very best of my knowledge, Kazakh professor Mukhtarbay Otelbaev submitted a paper on the solution of the Navier-Stokes regularity Millenium problem. It seems that he had found an upper bound for a unique solution for the periodic boundary condition formulation of the problem. For the readers who are familiar with the notation, the main result is stated as follows.

navier

This result is under review as we speak. In the end, we are hoping for a solution that is constructive, i.e. an algorithm that provides the solution itself, not only shows the existence of it – if so, this work might be an important stepping stone in this process. The translation of the main result without the proof is available here. Terence Tao also has some interesting recent results.

Wisdom of the Buddha(brot)

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This little gem is among the most fascinating mysteries one can encounter in mathematics. Read below.

wisdom_of_the_buddhabrot

Scalar fields, vector fields, divergence and curl

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These complicated terms bear quite simple and intuitive meanings. Read below.

scalar_vector_fields_divergence_curl

Oddtown, Eventown

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I have added a short write-up on the oddtown, eventown problems in mathematics.

oddtown_eventown

Pierre Moreau visiting

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Pierre Moreau from Ecole normale supérieure de Cachan is dropping by for a project in global illumination. Welcome! 🙂