That journal already exists lol, it's called PlosONE.
PLOS accepts positive results as well.
To the detriment of the authors who should know better than publish there if they have something interesting
New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
161–170 of 207 posts
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#162I still shudder when I think of the fact Tim Ferris mentioned, that trouble with thesis advisors is among leading cause of suicide in young men. Had similar trouble myself.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#163Why 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.
Speaking from my own experience in the physical sciences, labs don't self publish unsurprising results because there are only so many hours in the day and it's not worth the effort. Even just putting the results on your own website is a lot of work. Pulling all of the data together, analyzing it, putting it in visuals, writing up the results. It can be hard to justify committing that much time to something where the…
Copyright issues too. A lot of journals require that they have the sole copyright to the work they publish. If you have already published a portion of the work on your blog or whatever, then things can get lawyer-y.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's one of the three of his books I own, I'm afraid I can't easily narrow it down further. (I own all three as audiobooks, and I recall Simon Jones reading it, but it turns out he read all three.) • Predictably Irrational • The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty • The Upside of Irrationality
Tangentially related I wish there were a way to “search” within audio books. Once you’ve finished the book its almost impossible to figure out where a specific chapter or passage is if you’d like to go back.
They'd rather charge you separately for a DRM-locked ebook version.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#165The 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
There are many method to evaluate the work.
Sometimes it is just the count the number of published papers, or that dividing by the number of authors, or some weight if you are the first or the last author.
Number of citations, h-index, ...
About the journal, there is the impact factor and many somewhat arbitrary ranks...
A paper in a totally obscure journal that is not cited by other papers, has the same weight than a blog post.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#166Earlier 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).
And I see all these people cautioning against publishing in predatory journals, which can be distinguished by the fact they require me to pay to publish. Then we have the big respectable journals which also require payment to publish. Hmm...sounds like the only real difference is the respectable journals are considered respectable and the predatory journals are considered predatory...
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Like the speed of sound and the height of the table where the experiment is.
Note that the pressure of the air changes with height. For a few inches the change is negligible and very difficult (impossible?) to measure, but the effect must be out there.
I had once a problem with the temperature of the room, you usually ignore it, but it has a bigger effect like a 5% variation.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#168Half 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.
The problem in such cases usually isn't in finding a willing journal, but constraints on the authors. For example, during my PhD at a leading biological research institute in India, there was an informal ban on sending manuscripts to open access journals - a rule instituted by the Director, who's office had to approve every submission. At some point this ban was extended to conference proceedings, or journals below a certain Impact Factor. These rules might have been overturned by subsequent administrations, I don't know.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#169Why 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.
Working grad student scientist here.
One reason is prestige. This is not a fluffy concept in academia - publishing in prestigious journals means funding and tenure for professors and good job prospects for grad students.
Another is time. Every minute spent blogging is a minute spent not doing the above.
Another is curation. Frankly, Nature, Cell, Science feature work from the biggest, most well-funded labs. They have a lot of stuff masquerading as novel, but they also feature pioneering, transformative work. Science is about methods, and the fancy journals are where you see methods first.
Its a tragedy of the commons situation, sort of. We are all very aware of the problems with academic publishing.
Re: New academic journal only publishes 'unsurprising' research rejected by others
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Imagine how much worse it is outside where there's even no pretense of adhering to any intellectual rigor.
Also within academia there is still a wide spectrum of intellectual rigor across the disciplines. Some things are just more verifiable than others.