In theoretical physics all papers important or not are submitted as preprints to ArXiv and then prepared for publication, an informal system like that has been in place during all of modern science, only that before the internet professors send a number of copies of their latest result to collaborators and to people they thought might be interested in them. I think this is much nicer than the alternative, that important results are only circulated in small circles and "milked dry" until they are released to the public.