On Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 01:55:22PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > > > You want to bet? I mean it, I'll bet you that there is a 50% chance that at > least one of the next Nobel Prizes will be for work first publised in > Science or Nature and a 0% chance it was for stuff published in PLoS ONE.
I will not be taking the bet, for the following reasons: Firstly, we agree on the latter clause - there is an infinitesimal chance that any particular named open-access journal (eg PLoS) will scoop the Nobel prize - approaching zero in limit of an infinity of journals, so the bet should only be about the first clause. Secondly, it will take an enormous amount of effort to establish that the research was in fact published first in Nature or Science, rather than merely been cited there. It would involve reviewing all of the thousands of journals out there (as historically, it is often the second or third guy that thinks of an idea that gets the credit) to see if anyone has published the idea in any form whatsoever. Its not impossible - something like a Google Scholar scale of big data computation will make it feasible, but it will require writing custom tools, getting both of us to agree on the methodology, and well to be frank - I have other things to do with my time. > Those journals have not changed their policy in decades yet it's in them we > first learned why the stars shine, that DNA contains the information in > life and told us its shape and how it reproduced, told us about the > existence of the neutron which led to nuclear bombs and power, told us > about the first animal to be cloned, told us that continents moved, that a > huge asteroid crashed into Mexico 66 million years ago, that most of the > matter in existence is made of some strange invisible stuff, that neutrinos > have mass and oscillate, that the universe is not only expanding but > accelerating, that a quantum computer could factor numbers mush faster than > a regular computer. All those big things were first published in Science or > Nature, why is that going to change now that the world is awash in junk > science articles? > I don't know that your first claim is correct "Those journals have not changed their policy in decades", but I do know that if "the world is awash in junk science articles" now, and wasn't in the past, then it is highly likely you'll need to change your policy to cope. Just like we (almost) all use spam filters these days, but didn't 10 years ago. The policy I'm referring to (editorial rejection based on perceived interest or status) seems likely to be a reaction to the very "junk science" problem you mention. > > > > What's somewhat disturbing is that a lot of middle ranked journals are > > now doing the same > > > Because crappy articles vastly outnumber even mediocre articles, and there > are not enough mediocre outside judges to read all the stuff that is sent > to mediocre journals. > Yes - and believe it or not, I've seen plenty of articles in Nature that I would have rejected as obvious crap if I was refereeing the papers. I don't recall having read much in Science, fo some reason, and I don't recall having read a Nature article for about 10 years so - most of the stuff I'm interested in appear in specialty journals, although usually I read them from arXiv. Peer review is hardly perfect, but doing without it would probably be worse. What I am saying is in this wired world, where journal space is not a scarce resource, papers should only be rejected for obvious scientific reasons (which deals with most of the pseudo science rubbish, actually), or for being off-topic (Science should quite rightly reject humanities papers, for instance). Other papers, where there are doubts or confusion, should be subject to the author adequately addressing the referees' criticisms. Furthermore, with Google, or Google Scholar, and arXiv, you don't need the status of Nature or Science to make your article visible or cited. Good science will get cited, no matter where it is published (even arXiv articles get cited, where relevant). It does help for visibility to "network, network, network", of course - present at conferences, seek out scientific leaders and establish relationships, and so on - all of which can be hard work, but I seriously doubt a Nature or Science article will help. Where it clearly does help is in applying for tenure. Universities love the prestige that Nature or Science brings. But I don't think that helps science as a whole to advance -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
