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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

#61

Post by zapzupnz »

apsec112 wrote: post #38
icebergwarrior wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. I've seen some mightily acerbic rebuttals to other researchers' articles published as articles; I dread to think what a rebuttal to a review might look like.

I'm sure someone will say "well, maybe the acerbicness is the problem"; perhaps so, but I welcome the rigorous honesty with which some academics willingly write.

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

#62

Post by refurb »

willj wrote: post #54
refurb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm... it seems like this would be a good thing for undergrads to do in a class setting or an internship. It would give them experience writing an actual paper, albeit with null results.

That’s an option.

What would be useful is a low effort way to translate what’s written in a notebook (or electronic notebook) into a nice summary that can be shared.

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

#63

Post by bonoboTP »

austinl wrote: post #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.

You'd do the work, then sign up, wait a bit (while working on your next project) then you submit the results.

This is what happens with many grants anyway. You propose to research the stuff that you already understand, you get funded and can finally work on new stuff you don't understand well enough to get funded for.

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

#64

Post by naniwaduni »

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…

One cool thing about "unsurprising" results—trustworthiness of the source doesn't mean much more than fitting your preconceptions in any way that reviewers can tease out anyway.

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

#66

Post by klysm »

e2021 wrote: post #47
klysm wrote: post #15

The 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

I'm referring to grants and how people get funding.

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

#67

Post by gus_massa »

willj wrote: post #54
refurb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm... it seems like this would be a good thing for undergrads to do in a class setting or an internship. It would give them experience writing an actual paper, albeit with null results.

It would require a lot of babysitting. Some objects have a few slightly different definitions (for example,one book has a definition, and the other book the definition is 1/2 of that). Sometimes the programs to run the calculations don't use the same variables than the paper (perhaps the team changed the opinion, or the main reference, and the graph must show x+y vs y). Sometimes the work that should be included in the paper is underdocumented, ...

Another difficult part is to select what to publish, for example cut the dead branches and add a few more data about the interesting part. It is not usual to get a bunch of data and just publish it without some additional work.

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

#68

Post by rcoveson »

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.

There are sociology studies, published in closed journals, that detail the positive impacts that public libraries have on communities. The PhDs of that field must either be (1) blind to the irony, (2) totally resigned to this state of affairs, or (3) themselves complicit as managers of closed journals.

One more indictment: I'll bet they're all extremely depressed about how scientifically illiterate the general population is. They've probably published papers about that too, which the public can never read.

Some people see the devil in the Koch brothers, some people see it in Trump. I see it in the managers of closed journals. If you possess scientific knowledge and hoard it away behind a paywall, you are going to science hell. If you make a scientific discovery and sign away the publishing rights to somebody who intends to hoard it in this way, then you are spending at least a few years in science purgatory.

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

#69

Post by cinquemb »

ellis-bell wrote: post #37
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.

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 dr…

> 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.

Add to this: the ability to get things indexed properly in google (scholar), easy way to update metadata, server availability, dois, apis, etc. I contract for neliti.com and we provide stuff like this now for orgs/journals and conferences all over the world outside of the US for en, id, tr, ru, uk, es, pt, and ms locale content (pdfs,xmls,docx, datatests, etc.) but mostly a lot of indoensian orgs/journals and conferences, with ~40 using their own custom (sub) domain we route for.

I hope that eventually the landscape moves to a place where these services can be provided for individuals too (lots of upstream stuff like dois requires having an organization which i think is stupid in this day in age where any piece of digital content can easily get an identifier, related org or not).

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

#70

Post by owenshen24 »

timwaagh wrote: post #4

this is old news from last year, also there seems to be only one issue with one article, which means this project is stillborn. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/14932/browse?type=d...

Oof, that sucks to hear. Thanks for letting us know it's not been updated.
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