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Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#11

Post by dannykwells »

Open access journals by definition are almost never free/minimal cost - the idea is the the author's are paying more of the costs associated with publication, not less. But in return, your article can be read or accessed by anyone.

If you want to fork over 5k, I would recommend PLOS ONE as a major, well recognized open access journal that takes the "publish anything with scientific merit" approach.

If you do not want to pay, Arxiv is your best bet. However, I will say that, while good papers end up on arxiv, so do lots and lots of bad ones (that's the point) and there's no concept of "peer review" there.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#12

Post by chrisseaton »

dannykwells wrote: post #11

Open access journals by definition are almost never free/minimal cost - the idea is the the author's are paying more of the costs associated with publication, not less. But in return, your article can be read or accessed by anyone. If you want to fork over 5k, I would recommend PLOS ONE as a major, well recognized open access journal that takes the "publish anything with scientific merit" approach. If you do not want…

You can't post on arXiv unless you're an established researcher, I believe.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#13

Post by dijksterhuis »

Publishing to arXiv [1][2] is your best bet in the short term.

- Free

- Lots of subject areas (not just computer sci.)

- People may cite your work

- People may offer feedback

You do need to get endorsed first though [4] (as another comment mentions).

However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published, you need to start looking around at conferences. They're usually easier to get something through, as they tend to expect much shorter papers.

There are industry led conferences (like RuhrSec [3] for Cyber Security) which might be a good route to start with.

But, really, there's no shortcut for getting into a "proper" journal / conference. You need to research, have funds, time and, sometimes, a bit of fame already.

[1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16832/why-uploa...

[2] https://arxiv.org/help/support/faq#1C

[3] https://www.ruhrsec.de/2019/

[4] https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#14

Post by freeradical13 »

dannykwells wrote: post #11

Open access journals by definition are almost never free/minimal cost - the idea is the the author's are paying more of the costs associated with publication, not less. But in return, your article can be read or accessed by anyone. If you want to fork over 5k, I would recommend PLOS ONE as a major, well recognized open access journal that takes the "publish anything with scientific merit" approach. If you do not want…

That's a very helpful summary, thanks. From another comment, it seems arXiv requires academic affiliation or endorsement: https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

Are there any others?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #13

Publishing to arXiv [1][2] is your best bet in the short term. - Free - Lots of subject areas (not just computer sci.) - People may cite your work - People may offer feedback You do need to get endorsed first though [4] (as another comment mentions). However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published, you need to start looking around at conferences. They're usually easier to get something through, as they tend t…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#16

Post by hprotagonist »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #13

Publishing to arXiv [1][2] is your best bet in the short term. - Free - Lots of subject areas (not just computer sci.) - People may cite your work - People may offer feedback You do need to get endorsed first though [4] (as another comment mentions). However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published, you need to start looking around at conferences. They're usually easier to get something through, as they tend t…

Conferences as easy places to publish is highly field-dependent.

It's true in the biosciences (ask me how i know!). It is not true in, say, theoretical computer science.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#17

Post by hprotagonist »

chrisseaton wrote: post #12
dannykwells wrote: post #11

Open access journals by definition are almost never free/minimal cost - the idea is the the author's are paying more of the costs associated with publication, not less. But in return, your article can be read or accessed by anyone. If you want to fork over 5k, I would recommend PLOS ONE as a major, well recognized open access journal that takes the "publish anything with scientific merit" approach. If you do not want…

You can't post on arXiv unless you're an established researcher, I believe.

well, until someone vouches for you.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#18

Post by soVeryTired »

freeradical13 wrote: post #6
chrisseaton wrote: post #3

You need to specify your field. What's your article about? Different fields do things entirely differently, and short of publishing in Nature journals are very specific to their fields.

Here's my draft article: https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/ra... I'm not really sure what field I'm targeting, so I was hoping people would note their favorite open access journals and I could investigate (and I also thought a more generic list would be generally interesting to all the HN folk).

I don't mean to be harsh, but it's hard to see how your article is publishable in its current form.

An academic paper is a kind of conversation between experts. You need to describe the problem you're exploring, state what others have done in the area, and finally explain how you are contributing to the problem and show that your contribution is novel.

What you're writing about reads like a combination of philosophy and machine learning. The philosophy probably makes it unsuitable for a machine learning publication. I can't really speak for the academic philosophy side because I don't know the publication conventions there.

If you want to take this further, your first steps should be to identify the conversation you want to be a part of, and get to know the current landscape of that conversation (I'm mixing metaphors, but you know what I mean).

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#19

Post by Cyph0n »

hprotagonist wrote: post #16
dijksterhuis wrote: post #13

Publishing to arXiv [1][2] is your best bet in the short term. - Free - Lots of subject areas (not just computer sci.) - People may cite your work - People may offer feedback You do need to get endorsed first though [4] (as another comment mentions). However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published, you need to start looking around at conferences. They're usually easier to get something through, as they tend t…

Conferences as easy places to publish is highly field-dependent. It's true in the biosciences (ask me how i know!). It is not true in, say, theoretical computer science.

Computer science in general is conference-oriented, and even more so in security. It makes sense, simply because by the time you get published in a journal, the state-of-the-art would have likely already moved forward. So it follows that the state-of-the-art work is centered around conferences. In CS at least, journal articles are used to meet the "requirements" for faculty positions and/or promotions (e.g., 5 journal papers).

On the other hand, in EE, journals are more prestigious in general, partly due to the slower-moving nature of the field. A 9-12 month wait to get your article into a journal is not a huge deal. Further, a journal article typically shows more "complete" work than a conference article would, because it usually takes much more time to fully validate your work (relative to CS, for example).

For instance, if you're presenting a novel low-power circuit, you could get away with a simulation and/or a hastily taped-out version for the conference paper (ISSCC is the top conference for this). But publishing your results in a high impact journal like JSSC will require that you have a fully tested version, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?

#20

Post by freeradical13 »

soVeryTired wrote: post #18
freeradical13 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my draft article: https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/ra... I'm not really sure what field I'm targeting, so I was hoping people would note their favorite open access journals and I could investigate (and I also thought a more generic list would be generally interesting to all the HN folk).

I don't mean to be harsh, but it's hard to see how your article is publishable in its current form. An academic paper is a kind of conversation between experts. You need to describe the problem you're exploring, state what others have done in the area, and finally explain how you are contributing to the problem and show that your contribution is novel. What you're writing about reads like a combination of philosophy…

That's not harsh, it's realistic; thanks.

The conversation is probably mostly a part of the field of Positive Psychology and Meaning in Work literature, a summary of which I cite (Martela and Steger); however, when researching the field (I probably read about 50 academic articles), I didn't see any discussion about value theory (in the realm of philosophy). I have a connection to one of the researchers and maybe I can reach out to start the conversation.

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