The other day, arXiv.org split a popular category, astro-ph, into six subcategories. This is convenient… astro-ph, the astrophysics archive, was getting rather large, and the split into sub-categories makes it easier to find papers that are relevant to one’s specialization.
On the other hand… it also means that one is less likely to read papers that are not directly relevant to one’s specialization, but may be interesting, eye-opening, and may help to broaden one’s horizons. Is this a good thing?
There are no easy answers of course… the number of papers just on arXiv.org is mind-boggling (they proudly announced that they’ve passed the half million paper milestone on October, with thousands of new papers added every month) and no one has the time to read them all. Hmmm, perhaps I should have spent more time applauding a recent initiative by Physical Review, their This Week in Physics newsletter and associated Web site.