4 ms·

The whole process of getting published seems so strange to me. I only know an overview about how it works from friends who are in PhD programs, but I suppose I'

by dguo 9y ago

The whole process of getting published seems so strange to me. I only know an overview about how it works from friends who are in PhD programs, but I suppose I've gotten used to the open source world and the Internet in general, where anyone can "publish" globally and basically for free. Sure most of that content is subpar, but that's why we have methods and tools for curation. YouTube probably won't put my video on their homepage, but they're also not stopping me from putting it online in the first place. I've wondered what it would take to build something like a GitHub for science. Eisen's APPRAISE system seems like a huge step towards that, and I hope it works out.

tialaramex 9y ago
Nothing stops you publishing globally and for free, but in some disciplines nobody will read what you wrote if you do that unless they've already heard of you. In some disciplines you absolutely can just self-publish and get noticed. Arxiv, starting in the 1990s, allowed you to upload a TeX document about your work in say, astronomy and other astronomers who had the World Wide Web (this was still the 1990s after all) could read it, pass comment and perhaps recommend it to others. These days Arxiv has sections for physics, mathematics, astronomy, computer science and related disciplines. However: Some disciplines and sub-disciplines have a huge problem where enthusiastic amateurs want desperately to tell everybody in that discipline about some nonsense. For them systems like Arxiv are hopeless, because every day you're going to get fifty documents from some guy living with his mom who is convinced he's harnessing zero point energy with a paperclip and a pair of fridge magnets, or a 53 year old self-taught cryptographer who is convinced her scheme for "reusable one time pads" works even though she doesn't understand why the OTP is provably secure in the first place.
- dguo 9y ago
  Yep, I'm aware of Arxiv. What I should have said is that while it's certainly possible for people to self-publish, it's not the norm (as far as I can tell) for most serious scientific efforts. Whereas in the software world, it's not at all surprising when even huge companies like Microsoft and Google release software using GitHub. I don't see nonsense as a significant problem. There are plenty of throwaway projects on GitHub that receive no attention, but we have methods of curation (i.e. creator reputation, reviews, etc.) for surfacing the things that do deserve consideration. These methods may be frequently imperfect and inefficient, but if they work for code, retail products, etc., I don't see why they can't work for scientific papers.

by dguo 9y ago

tialaramex 9y ago

Nothing stops you publishing globally and for free, but in some disciplines nobody will read what you wrote if you do that unless they've already heard of you. In some disciplines you absolutely can just self-publish and get noticed. Arxiv, starting in the 1990s, allowed you to upload a TeX document about your work in say, astronomy and other astronomers who had the World Wide Web (this was still the 1990s after all) could read it, pass comment and perhaps recommend it to others. These days Arxiv has sections for physics, mathematics, astronomy, computer science and related disciplines. However: Some disciplines and sub-disciplines have a huge problem where enthusiastic amateurs want desperately to tell everybody in that discipline about some nonsense. For them systems like Arxiv are hopeless, because every day you're going to get fifty documents from some guy living with his mom who is convinced he's harnessing zero point energy with a paperclip and a pair of fridge magnets, or a 53 year old self-taught cryptographer who is convinced her scheme for "reusable one time pads" works even though she doesn't understand why the OTP is provably secure in the first place.

dguo 9y ago
Yep, I'm aware of Arxiv. What I should have said is that while it's certainly possible for people to self-publish, it's not the norm (as far as I can tell) for most serious scientific efforts. Whereas in the software world, it's not at all surprising when even huge companies like Microsoft and Google release software using GitHub. I don't see nonsense as a significant problem. There are plenty of throwaway projects on GitHub that receive no attention, but we have methods of curation (i.e. creator reputation, reviews, etc.) for surfacing the things that do deserve consideration. These methods may be frequently imperfect and inefficient, but if they work for code, retail products, etc., I don't see why they can't work for scientific papers.