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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

#141

Post by mikk14 »

learnstats2 wrote: post #138
mikk14 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Negative results are important. Null results are of very limited interest. The two are worlds apart. A null result simply means you tried something and it didn't work. But you don't know why. You haven't proven it didn't work. There are literally millions of reasons why something might not work. For instance, you could try to use compound X to cure disease Y, observe no effect, and conclude that X doesn't…

I understand that people generally mean 'null results' here, by your definition, when they say 'null results'. That's the intent. Null results are also important . Suppression of null results allows for p-hacking and confirmation biases to creep into research, and greatly reduces the power of literature reviews.

True, but I'm not really arguing against what you're saying. It is true that, when you have a positive (or a negative!) result you should also report on the nulls you obtained on the way (most likely in the supplementary materials) as a compendium of the result, to put it into context.

What I'm arguing against is publishing a null result as a stand-alone publication. This creates the illusion of it being somehow a "result", which is not (in fact, we should stop calling them "results" altogether). With a null you haven't proven anything, and thus it is not a sufficient basis for a publication.

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#142

Post by simsla »

mycall wrote: post #85
zapzupnz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the role of an academic journal in 2020? For me, trustworthiness. Not all journals are equal but some are held in such high esteem that I would grant a lot more credence to the findings of an article published in a journal than one self-published. I have neither the time or will to assess the merits of each individual who might publish something. If a name is sufficiently big within a field, it's usually in…

If a self-published article included full equipment and software to replicate their results in a multimedia fashion (basically included engineering), would that alter your snob-ness?

It's about laziness and efficiency rather than snobbery, IMHO.

You're outsourcing the QC to a trusted third party.

Reading papers takes up enough time and effort as it is. I do not have the time to reproduce all of them.

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#143

Post by the-smug-one »

kraetzin wrote: post #28
MattGaiser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

This is a relatively new practice, invented by Robert Maxwell in the 1950s or so.

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#144

Post by sampo »

kraetzin wrote: post #14

Half 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…

> A paper on the subject would almost be considered uninteresting, and a high ranking journal would ignore it (which is why it's considered "unpublishable").

There is a range of journals from high ranking to solid mid-level to lower tiers to somewhat suspicious to downright obviously pay-to-publish. You can always find a level that will publish your article.

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#145

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

ellis-bell wrote: post #41
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! It means the data is too noisy to make any conclusion.

not necessarily. it could. but if x and y are truly uncorrelated variables that are observed with unlimited precision, then you still would not reject the null that they are uncorelated

"Truly uncorrelated" is a problematic concept. Most of the time, any two things within each other's light cones, have at least tiny direct or indirect effects on each other. These effects are usually not that tiny in experimental settings because of imperfect experimental tools and procedures.

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#146

Post by fock »

cinquemb wrote: post #102
luc13 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

but journals and peer-review enforce this. That's a good thing (though I agree that letting journals do this is stupid – arxiv is out there, why can't they sign up unis to make people review the things there.)

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#147

Post by Dumblydorr »

choxi wrote: post #32

Why 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.

Tenure and funding are based on performance in journals and previous grants. Informal writing and reporting is nice, but it won't "pay the bills."

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#148

Post by ketzu »

zapzupnz wrote: post #59
choxi wrote: post #32

Why 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.

> What's the role of an academic journal in 2020? For me, trustworthiness. Not all journals are equal but some are held in such high esteem that I would grant a lot more credence to the findings of an article published in a journal than one self-published. I have neither the time or will to assess the merits of each individual who might publish something. If a name is sufficiently big within a field, it's usually in…

For me it's also a probability game:

If it's good research, it's more likely to be published in an academic venue (and possibly the other way around). So if there are a lot of papers, I will prefer the academically published ones.

I have limited time to read publications, I am not going to read everything just because it is available somewhere. For me, the amount of papers published these days is an argument for academic venues, not against them.

(As I am a computer scientist I have a hard time writing "journals" instead of any more general term, as conferences are way too popular in this field.)

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#149

Post by conjectures »

bumby wrote: post #29
kraetzin wrote: post #14

Half 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…

Well I guess the problem there is inviting them to your defence. People gonna people.

Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others

#150

Post by bumby »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #121
sullyj3 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

I recall Dan Ariely mentioning this in one of his books. His field is psychology/behavioural economics, a field where very often either outcome of an experiment can seem obvious after the fact. (Questions like Do newborn babies have an intuitive understanding of gravity? ) As I recall, he restructured his lectures, asking upfront for a show of hands as to which outcome everyone anticipated, before the big reveal. Aft…

That’s interesting because much of the thesis was rooted in behavioral economics. The faculty that turned it down initially were in the economics department
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