The problem with null results and boring results is that there are too many of them.
New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
101–110 of 207 posts
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#102Why don’t research groups just publish to their own websites or directories like arxiv? What’s the role of an academic journal in 2020? Honest question, I’d love to see more blogging from hard science academics but I’m wondering if there’s a reason why that’s challenging or if it’s just academic culture. We should have a Substack/OnlyFans for scientists.
Peer-reviewing. A research that haven't been peer-reviewed is worth nothing in my opinion and it can't be achieved with open archives.
Luckily not everyone feels this way, and may be willing to mail an author if they found some mistake in their open archived paper/data/document they read because they think it could be useful/interesting and the author may be willing to update it with all the relevant metadata acknowledging the edit.
The more of academia that happens outside of well defined institutions, the better for the public.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#103Half 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…
Academia is 'full' of people who lack intellectual integrity. Imagine Frege's response to Bertrand Russell's letter concerning barber's paradox: 'it's obvious!' Instead of doing that, Frege openly acknowledged Russell's criticism in his book.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#104Half 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…
Since the first and second interactions were 4 or more years apart, it is entirely conceivable that the field had moved enough during those years to warrant a genuine change in opinion.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#105If every SW-developera had the same mindset they would have build a lot from scratch every time
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#106Half 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…
1. Other than your time, why not preprint it? 2. As an aside, I can't tell you how many times I've tried to work on stuff, it ends up working, and then I find papers and people saying what we did would never work. Sometimes the ignorance is good.
What field is this? In the physics papers I've worked on we generally try to state all the assumptions we made when we rule something out, but we do sometimes miss things, and I suppose that in some fields the preparation might me messier.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#107That journal already exists lol, it's called PlosONE.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#108The problem is researchers aren't going to want/be able to spend the time to properly document negative/unsurprising results. The financial incentives in place don't support it despite its incredible value.
But isn't the reason they don't want to write it up because they know they won't get any credit for it? That is exactly what this is trying to remedy
It takes time to write a paper, even for negative results, and moreover journals charge a hefty fee.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I think it's laughable they still charge extra for color pictures.
They charge extra to have your pictures printed in color, online everything is in color anyway. I think that is a fair practice no?
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#110I'd also love to see a journal that agreed to publish work before any results are known. Researchers would submit hypotheses and methodology for review, and the journal would publish the results after the experiments were conducted, regardless of their outcome. It would still incentivize interesting hypotheses, but wouldn't lead to results-biased publications.
This is a great idea and already being done (somewhat) in some of fields of psychology through pre-registration [0, 1, 2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preregistration [1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/psychologi... [2] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/preregistratio...