Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
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Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#2> we measure the novelty and conventionality of manuscripts by the atypicality of combinations of journals in their reference lists
Kind of an odd proxy for novelty of the research, but ok I guess. Maybe they’re going for cross-disciplinary work?
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#3Bullshit. Journals select for novelty, this is true. But this is novelty in a trifling fashion, like teaching a dog to roll over. The entire system, at least in the UK is set up to actively discourage risky research entirely. Doing something truly new is discouraged unless you are truly a senior or leader. By then, you've probably lost most of your imagination anyway.
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#4> we measure the novelty and conventionality of manuscripts by the atypicality of combinations of journals in their reference lists Kind of an odd proxy for novelty of the research, but ok I guess. Maybe they’re going for cross-disciplinary work?
Switch to another metric, make a different conclusion. This is modern science where you can prove whatever you want.
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#5Bullshit. Journals select for novelty, this is true. But this is novelty in a trifling fashion, like teaching a dog to roll over. The entire system, at least in the UK is set up to actively discourage risky research entirely. Doing something truly new is discouraged unless you are truly a senior or leader. By then, you've probably lost most of your imagination anyway.
[citation needed]
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#6> we measure the novelty and conventionality of manuscripts by the atypicality of combinations of journals in their reference lists Kind of an odd proxy for novelty of the research, but ok I guess. Maybe they’re going for cross-disciplinary work?
Yeah, this was my first reaction as well. It's incredibly hard to tell how much signal is in a metric like this. I can imagine two papers or two grant proposal with significantly different degrees of novelty that have the exact same references.
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#7> we measure the novelty and conventionality of manuscripts by the atypicality of combinations of journals in their reference lists Kind of an odd proxy for novelty of the research, but ok I guess. Maybe they’re going for cross-disciplinary work?
Switch to another metric, make a different conclusion. This is modern science where you can prove whatever you want.
You're right about the metric, but this paper falls into the category of information analysis, not science. As you say, the results for this kind of work usually depend on the metric, and since those metrics are at the choice of authors, the result are open to debate. I'm not saying that the results are uninteresting, only that it is risky to make strong conclusions based on them.
For example, I work in a multidisciplinary field. Once I counted the citations per word of text in papers published in the separate disciplines. I found that biology-oriented research had a cite/word rate that was about 5 times that of physics-oriented research. I don't think that says anything really significant about the two fields, but it is something worth knowing, when judging tenure files.
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#8Bullshit. Journals select for novelty, this is true. But this is novelty in a trifling fashion, like teaching a dog to roll over. The entire system, at least in the UK is set up to actively discourage risky research entirely. Doing something truly new is discouraged unless you are truly a senior or leader. By then, you've probably lost most of your imagination anyway.
As a clinical researcher, I wholeheartedly agree. Even worse, meta analysis is comparatively so well cited (even shitty ones) that doing anything else, such as original research, will be suboptimal since the reduced time investment allows you to publish nonstop. Truly, meta analysis has become a blood-ducking parasite of medical science.
I know many young researchers who've specialized in meta analysis for that reason.
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#9Interestingly, this article defends traditionally established peer reviewing structures claiming newer reforms aren't needed
Re: Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review
#10Bullshit. Journals select for novelty, this is true. But this is novelty in a trifling fashion, like teaching a dog to roll over. The entire system, at least in the UK is set up to actively discourage risky research entirely. Doing something truly new is discouraged unless you are truly a senior or leader. By then, you've probably lost most of your imagination anyway.
[citation needed]
I suggest the author cite the following works which I believe are related to this topic:
list of own publications