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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

#31

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).

And the reviewers will get exactly zero out of this

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

#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.

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

#33
I'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.

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

#34

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).

Depends on the field. For example, practically all of machine learning and related fields are $0 to publish and are open access by default. It’s been a huge boon for everyone except I guess traditional publishers.

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

#35
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.

While we're at it, why not make public whoever audited or referred the paper? Why does that need to be secret?

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

#36
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.

I have very limited research experience (2 undergrad practicums) but the professor I worked with was a leader in their field and sat on a journal review panel along with others of similar standing. So I suppose consensus among colleagues is " x,y and z are leaders on a topic, their opinions are in b journal so I should read that."

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

#37
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.

i think it's largely culture. academics are "graded" based on how many papers they publish. depending on your geography, quality matters too.

but in most cases they aren't measured by how much non-peer reviewed publications they have.

there is also a technical barrier that works both ways. most don't have the capability to have a regularly updated website with content that otherwise would have been put in the file drawer. and the other side of that coin is what audience will actually find / read it online.

twitter is becoming the defacto medium of dissemination, however, so that may bode well for promoting other types of publishing medium.

edit ALSO note that there are some academics who publish high-quality blogs. i'm thinking of [murat demirbas](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/). i'm not familiar with any that publish actual results, however. the threat would be someone else might "steal" the idea and publish it elsewhere, particularly in competitive fields like bio.

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

#38
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.

While we're at it, why not make public whoever audited or referred the paper? Why does that need to be secret?

People might retaliate against a colleague who gave a bad review.

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

#39
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.

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 pay off is "other people might be interested".

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

#40

I can see this journal being 10x-20x the size of normal journals

A very good point. My experience was that maybe 5% of the work I did made it into a publication.

If I wrote up everything that didn't work, my PhD would have been 10 years instead of 5.

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