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The arXiv is an immediate solution to the author's concerns. Preprints have a long history in physics; the journals are the official stamp of importance and pla
by ISL 11y ago
The arXiv is an immediate solution to the author's concerns. Preprints have a long history in physics; the journals are the official stamp of importance and plausibility, but most timely results appear first on the arXiv.
If you put a paper there, and someone reads it/finds it useful, or if someone does a literature search on the subject, the arXiv entry will get cited.
<looks at arXiv, notes lack of a sociology section>
I don't know why arXiv hasn't broadened its scope outside of the natural sciences, but I'm certain that a) Ginsparg has a good reason, and b) they're happy to help others implement similar systems.
- dougmccune 11y agoThere are actually a lot of solutions to the problem, and the author seems aware of them, as discussed at the very end of the article. There are pre-print servers like arXiv, there are mega journals that have a slightly different type of peer review (what I'd call methodological review as opposed to"importance" review) like PLOS One, PeerJ, SAGE Open, etc. And yet even though the author is aware of these options, he acknowledges that it all comes down to how his publication will be perceived by his peers, and the non-traditional options simply don't yet have enough reputational weight. So fundamentally even though there are lots of other options, they aren't realistic because of the politics of academia. To be fair, most of these non-traditional systems cater almost exclusively to hard sciences and don't focus on sociology.