The direct link will become outdated if a new version of the paper is uploaded; also, the main page will contain a lot of useful data about the publication (citations/etc), will include the abstract in the page, and give a choice of what format you read it in.

1. http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.1938

I worked in a major lab in this exact area (high temperature superconductivity) and had papers published in much more prestigious journals, and getting published was often a question of politics more than science- if your results undermine a theory that one of your "peers" built his career on, you may not be getting published in that journal, no matter how scientifically correct.

And back in those days things were a lot less political than they are now.

Don't presume that "peer review" means anything. It really doesn't. It doesn't mean the peers have reproduced the results, and it doesn't mean the peers are even up to speed specifically enough to be able to authoritatively say the results are correct.

It is about as equivalent as the fact-checkers at the New York Times, and you know how often they print retractions. At the time, quality was slipping too and it was getting more political.

I'm skeptical about this claim, but it has been awhile since I worked in that area, so I won't say either way.

But don't take "peer review" as meaning anything significant.

It's like saying Obama is telling the truth because democratic "truth squads" blessed his opinion.

I know what peer review means, and I know that it's none of those things. But getting a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal means you passed a sniff test, which is better than being written up in your Alma Mater's pop-news magazine.