Comments on: Srednicki on Quantum Field Theory

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 20:23:35 +0000

Srednicki’s “compromise” is a self-serving advertisement for his book. Posting an error-ridden draft is not much of a scholarly contribution. I respect people who leave the finished book online, but this is just a publicity stunt. Anyone who deliberately leaves incorrect drafts online is a jerk (in my head I’m using much stronger language).

I admit I don’t know how many errors the draft on his web site contains, but judging by the list of errata for the published book, he makes surprisingly many minor errors.

By: Walt

Walt — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:59:13 +0000

While I love arxiv more than I love life itself, I’m not really clear how its run or what its policies are, so I don’t know what sort of faith to put in it.

By: John C. Baez

John C. Baez — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:30:03 +0000

Thanks! I think everyone should follow Srednicki's example and make their textbooks available electronically for free. Unless it's a best-selling calculus text or something like that, the author never makes much money off it anyway. Even better, Srednicki should follow Warren Siegel's example. Siegel put his quantum field theory textbook on the arXiv, along with his book on string field theory! Someday we'll all die, and who knows what will happen to our websites - but the arXiv is likely to survive for quite a while.