We also need a journal to publish methods that failed. I did so much work during my PhD that was dead end and is not documented.
New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
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Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#22Half of my PhD thesis is considered "unpublishable" because, after doing the work, my supervisors felt it's actually "unsurprising" that it didn't work out. We took methods that had been exploited to improve on previous results for over a decade to their logical extreme, and found that this method no longer leads to improvements. After doing the work it seems obvious. A paper on the subject would almost be considered…
By experience, I want to say : way too much. Journals and published articles looks like a research lab full of PhD working on their owns without access to all the previous results of the labs (good, bad and everything in between) and do not talk to others unless they have a 10 minutes seminar every six months to show some stuff quickly.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#23I can see this journal being 10x-20x the size of normal journals
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#24“We kind of want to fill the void and publish results that are the opposite of that —unsurprising, weaker, statistically insignificant, not conclusive and so on.”
These are at least 5 Distinct categories, hope they make a distinction...
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#25I like the idea but I don't really get why they accept "statistically insignificant" results. What I expect from a scientific paper is to prove (even emprically) something. For example, if a paper claims something like "we show that using method X instead of Y doesn't improve the results", it won't get published on most journals... except this one, which is awesome, but the paper still has to prove that claim.
Doesn't "statistically insignificant" mean papers which conclude something like "we find no correlation between X and Y"?
No! It means the data is too noisy to make any conclusion.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#26Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#27Half of my PhD thesis is considered "unpublishable" because, after doing the work, my supervisors felt it's actually "unsurprising" that it didn't work out. We took methods that had been exploited to improve on previous results for over a decade to their logical extreme, and found that this method no longer leads to improvements. After doing the work it seems obvious. A paper on the subject would almost be considered…
That sucks to hear. Null results are important, as you say, if only to dissuade others from doing the same. See also the "file-drawer problem" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias ). Also, with regards to the incentives in the field and the lack of null results, there's always Ioannidis's classic work ( https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... ).
Those are some good reads, and have absolutely been my experience. It's depressing how many publications that I've come across don't provide the whole story, and are probably false.
I've found that looking at what a paper doesn't report can be far more important that what they claim.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.journalnetwork.org/journals/international-journa...
Is it normal for journals to charge a fee for publishing?
This is normal practice. To publish in a respectable journal you are charged £1000+. To publish your paper as open access, you can be charged another ~£1000 for the privledge (IEEE).
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#29Half of my PhD thesis is considered "unpublishable" because, after doing the work, my supervisors felt it's actually "unsurprising" that it didn't work out. We took methods that had been exploited to improve on previous results for over a decade to their logical extreme, and found that this method no longer leads to improvements. After doing the work it seems obvious. A paper on the subject would almost be considered…
My experience: I proposed a thesis to an advisor who deemed it unlikely to work. He ran it by a colleague who came to the same conclusion. I went to a different major and pursued the same thesis and invited the previous faculty who initially turned it down to the defense because it was relevant to their field.
It was frustrating to hear them voice their opinions in the defense that they felt, “of course it world work.” After seeing the data, they took the exact opposite side claiming it was obvious to the point of being of limited publishing value.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.journalnetwork.org/journals/international-journa...
Is it normal for journals to charge a fee for publishing?
Yes. Academic publishing is a bizarre market. Editors and referees volunteer their time. Authors pay to publish. Libraries pay for subscriptions so that researchers can read. Publishers handle distribution, but in a digital-first era that's mostly pure profit.