You do the research, write the paper, submit the paper, wait for peer review, and then, if the paper’s accepted, wait several months for the journal to publish. Once it’s published what you’ve written is available to only a handful of journal subscribers and most of them won’t read it anyway.
Is that really the best way to get an idea out there?
Gloria Origgi thinks not and so she’s … written a research paper to trash research papers. OK, that’s not totally fair. What she’s actually trashing is the slow, old-fashioned system of submitting papers to peer-reviewed journals. She’s not the first person to make that complaint and she doesn’t have a grand plan for how to fix it (though she does throw out a few possibilities, like allowing colleagues to see papers earlier in the writing process so their feedback can be incorporated). Here’s the heart of her grievance:
It seems thus in my everyday professional life that academic papers are no more the most efficient way to communicate the state of advancement of my research to my community, nor to keep in contact with my colleagues. Striving to publish in an academic journal does not depend on the efficiency of the papers as tools for communication, but on social norms in use in the academic system that I passively accept because this is the way I have learned to do my job.
The title of her paper is “Epistemic Vigilance and Epistemic Responsibility in the Liquid World of Scientific Publications.” I would add to her complaint that I think researchers should stop using needlessly opaque titles.
(The paper is published in Social Epistemology. The abstract is here. The full article—oh, the irony!—is not available online.)
12 Responses to Let’s Stop Publishing Research Papers
bswetman - September 15, 2010 at 4:34 pm
The paper IS available online at the link you supplied. It’s just not Open Access, rather it’s $30.00. Many of your readers will find that they can read it because of institutional subscriptions.
11182967 - September 15, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Here’s the complication. While research is ongoing, publication has always been more than just a “snapshot” in the contemporary sense. A research paper presents conclusions, albeit temporary ones, which mark a momentary resting point in the ongoing research in a particular area. They facilitate a sort of “punctuated equilibrium” in the evolution of knowledge, an opportunity to ingest, digest, and absorb or elminate the results of a particular piece of research. The pause in the process is certainly artificial, but if there are no pauses analysis and synthesis cannot take place. A good research paper should be something different than a constantly revised Wikipedia article (who knows who said what when?). Publication online should be developed as an alternative and, probably, replacement to publication in the form of printed journals which often accumultate like old National Geographics–seldom consulted but difficult to dispense with. There will need to be a mechanism for peer review for online publication–there has to be some initial sorting and filtering process, esp. given the ease of posting on the Web. But online publication can also enhance the promptness and extent of learned commentary on the published research. So we need something like peer-reviewed research blogs with commentary. Whoever figures this out will have the thanks of all except Elsevier. No bad thing that.
11159995 - September 15, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Uh, is Ms. Origgi not aware that theoretical physicists have been using pre-prints to distribute research results in early stage for a long time now? This is not exactly a new idea. And as more universities mandate Green OA for their faculty’s articles in all fields, rapid and cost-free distribution of knowledge will accelerate even more. Green OA does not, of course, obviate the delay resulting from peer review. Nor is it an ideal solution, as it does not generally disseminate the archival version of an article but only the version revised after peer review (but before final processing by the publisher). For many purposes, such as communication of basic ideas or for use in the classroom, this is fine. For other purposesm such as citation by future scholars, it is not as the Green OA version may still contain many mistakes.–Sandy Thatcher
gloriaoriggi1 - September 15, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Of course I am aware, this is an old story and the pre-prints circulation in theoretical phyics the most cited example (we discussed about it in a online conference http://www.text-e.org that I’ve organized in 2000!!). But my paper is not about this. Nor about eliminating the scientific papers. It is about vigilance and responsibility on our own practices, that is, don’t do things just because you’ve learned to do so (like ublishing in a certain format) but ask yourself what are the norms you tacitly endorse when you act. This is philosphy, and the point is completely missed by the journalist who published this meaningless news about my article. At least this encourages me to go on writing academic papers: to be sure to target the appropriate community and avoid people who are frightened by the word “epistemology”!
gloriaoriggi1 - September 15, 2010 at 8:45 pm
about comment: 2. 11182967A “snapshot” of research can be a video, a dataset, a chart: it need not to be packed in the format of the scientific paper, which is a quite robust rethorical format whose reason to persisr is because the paper is the unity of measure of citation indexes.Let’s think about new formats and ways of giving alternative snapshots of our work. Althoigh the journalist who has written this blog entry doesn’t mention it, my paper discussed at lenghth the possibility of alternative formats, such as modular papers in which each part is evaluable on its own.
3doglady - September 16, 2010 at 8:32 am
Needlessly opaque titles feed into public perceptions of the irrelevance of academic work and hinder academic communication, but sensationalist headlines like ‘Let’s Stop Publishing Research Papers”, while eye-catching,dumb down academic discourse. In this case, the too cute title also serves as a cover for an article that adds nothing new to a familiar complaint. Of course we have to figure out how to use electronic publishing and dissemination more effectively without sacrificing peer review, but that’s not news. Ideas please!
rrowlett - September 16, 2010 at 8:38 am
Certainly in most of the sciences, the extended timetable of submit-review-accept-wait months for publication is no longer really valid. Maybe when I was a post-doc in the 1980s I could expect up to a 14 month wait for publication in print in a prestigious journal, but nowadays, the submit-peer-review-accept-available online cycle is very quick, maybe a 4-6 weeks. Most of the delay is due to peer-review, which is the value-added part of the operation anyway.Cheers.
goodeyes - September 16, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I feel there is much look the other way as far as research quality because numbers are needed. We should require less but expect higher quality.
22280998 - September 16, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Peer review may be cumbersome, slow, and a bit “luck of the draw,” but do we really have time to look at everything that floats across the web? Putting it bluntly, peer reviewers act as spam filters.
hannaharendt - September 16, 2010 at 2:04 pm
As someone trained in the humanities, perhaps my comments will not apply. Nonetheless, trained in philosophy, I was actually kicked off tenure track (yes, kicked off, not even allowed to apply) because I began using philosophy in creative nonfiction venues rather than hagiographically writing highly specialized journal articles about “primary texts,” in Nabokov’s words do little but collect dust mites (don’t know what the cyber equivalent would be, but the picture is clear). I left academia because of its short-sighted protocols and became a multimedia artist. Philosophy now lives on.
drgunn - September 16, 2010 at 4:57 pm
For what it’s worth, Mendeley is trying to figure this angle out, too.
ric822 - September 17, 2010 at 10:05 am
It is my responsibility to read the published research papers of applicants for various positions at our University. For those who have not been published, we ask for a research paper the applicant has created.The vast majority of the “unpublished” papers are well written and have cannot be discerned from the “published” papers.At our University, if an applicant has or has not been “published” is less relevant with each passing year. While we believe that research is important, we are more focused on if someone in an instructional position is keeping up with changes in their given field.