4 ms·

Posting PDFs on your own website is “publishing” in the literal sense of putting information out there, but it is hardly publishing in the academic sense of get

Posting PDFs on your own website is “publishing” in the literal sense of putting information out there, but it is hardly publishing in the academic sense of getting articles in print in a journal where other participants in the field are going to see and respond to your work. Since many journals have double-blind peer review, if the OP’s work is sound, then there is no reason he should not go for journal submission. In terms of building a reputation, that is a lot better than self-publishing, the domain of cranks. In my own field of linguistics I know several people interested in the subject who post their own PDFs on their own websites or on Academia.edu, and though they try to format those PDFs to look serious and respectable, these people creep most actual scholars out and we try to avoid those writings. Finally, peer review is not just gatekeeping, it leads to better papers. If your work is publishable, then the peer reviews will often suggest ways you can clarify your argumentation, and they will point you to interesting citations that you might have missed. You miss out on all that by self-hosting.

inetknght 8y ago
If you think self-publishing is the domain of cranks then you'll never find the people worth looking at. Submitting to a journal is fine, but own your work on your own site.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > If you think self-publishing is the domain of cranks then you'll never find the people worth looking at. Why you think that the people who self-publish are more worth looking at than people who publish in journals?
  - inetknght 8y ago
    Why do you think people worth looking at are exclusively found in journals?
    - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
      Because the examples of self-hosted PDFs in my field that I have seen over many years now, are so horribly crackpot that even if there is a magical 1% of tenable self-published work out there somewhere, it is not worth people’s time looking for it when journals offer a better signal-to-noise ratio. And while it may not be true of cutting-edge STEM fields, most of the must-cite literature in my own field is not available digitally and is in fact held at only a few libraries worldwide. People are unlikely to have access to it unless they are already closely involved in academia, and in that case they will be keen on journal publication for career advancement. Consequently, self-publication strongly correlates with not having an awareness of the standard literature.
      - DoctorOetker 8y ago
        it's still sad those 1% are being glossed over. I guess a lot of experts in their respective domain still spend a fraction of their time reading other information sources with low signal to noise ratios: news riddled with advertisement and propaganda, perhaps sports, fiction books movies or television series. EDIT: addition: If they spent a quarter of that time sorting crackpot papers the signal to noise level could be fixed, and they'd still have 3/4 of the time for their usual news binge or whatver) I'd actually be more than happy to see some tax payer money spent on the following system: authors withoud accreditation can sign up on a government hosted site, and provide their articles (or links or p2p hashes of them). Accredited domain experts can participate and earn money by getting assigned 2 or 3 random papers in the same domain but from probable cranks. They simply sort them in credibility. This way probably crank papers get scored, but the top 1% eventually floats up. Scientists/experts inbetween jobs, or out of office hours can earn money on the side, and BS gets seperated from intesting ideas or insights. Signal to noise level near the top is good. Edit: I hereby hand out the idea for free, if you feel like making a startup: Crack Crucible: - host (openly tongue in cheek) "crackpots" and their papers, self-categorizing in domains - domain experts can sign up, the site generates a unique string, the expert inserts the string on his/her researchgate profile, the site scrapes the expert's researchgate profile. (hereby delegating 'expertness' to researchgate), they too self-categorize in domains? - the site randomly selects 2 or more papers for the expert's applicable domain, weighted by inverse word count of the paper (conciseness is rewarded with opportunity to be seen) - the expert reads the 2 or more papers and is only asked to sort/rank them, without any implied support since most of the time all the papers wwere nonsense, yet the site demands sorting them by (in)credibility - the result is interesting outsider papers by domain (without the coming and going of news cycles, since the papers are selected at random, and hence undergo brownian motion up and down)
- ska 8y ago
  Self-publishing is definitely the domain of cranks. It's just not the exclusive domain of cranks. The real problem with this isn't that there is nothing worth reading being presented, but that the signal to noise ratio is just terrible. You can waste an inordinate amount of time looking fruitlessly - I can't blame anyone for deciding it isn't worthwhile.

inetknght 8y ago

If you think self-publishing is the domain of cranks then you'll never find the people worth looking at. Submitting to a journal is fine, but own your work on your own site.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> If you think self-publishing is the domain of cranks then you'll never find the people worth looking at. Why you think that the people who self-publish are more worth looking at than people who publish in journals?
- inetknght 8y ago
  Why do you think people worth looking at are exclusively found in journals?
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    Because the examples of self-hosted PDFs in my field that I have seen over many years now, are so horribly crackpot that even if there is a magical 1% of tenable self-published work out there somewhere, it is not worth people’s time looking for it when journals offer a better signal-to-noise ratio. And while it may not be true of cutting-edge STEM fields, most of the must-cite literature in my own field is not available digitally and is in fact held at only a few libraries worldwide. People are unlikely to have access to it unless they are already closely involved in academia, and in that case they will be keen on journal publication for career advancement. Consequently, self-publication strongly correlates with not having an awareness of the standard literature.
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      it's still sad those 1% are being glossed over. I guess a lot of experts in their respective domain still spend a fraction of their time reading other information sources with low signal to noise ratios: news riddled with advertisement and propaganda, perhaps sports, fiction books movies or television series. EDIT: addition: If they spent a quarter of that time sorting crackpot papers the signal to noise level could be fixed, and they'd still have 3/4 of the time for their usual news binge or whatver) I'd actually be more than happy to see some tax payer money spent on the following system: authors withoud accreditation can sign up on a government hosted site, and provide their articles (or links or p2p hashes of them). Accredited domain experts can participate and earn money by getting assigned 2 or 3 random papers in the same domain but from probable cranks. They simply sort them in credibility. This way probably crank papers get scored, but the top 1% eventually floats up. Scientists/experts inbetween jobs, or out of office hours can earn money on the side, and BS gets seperated from intesting ideas or insights. Signal to noise level near the top is good. Edit: I hereby hand out the idea for free, if you feel like making a startup: Crack Crucible: - host (openly tongue in cheek) "crackpots" and their papers, self-categorizing in domains - domain experts can sign up, the site generates a unique string, the expert inserts the string on his/her researchgate profile, the site scrapes the expert's researchgate profile. (hereby delegating 'expertness' to researchgate), they too self-categorize in domains? - the site randomly selects 2 or more papers for the expert's applicable domain, weighted by inverse word count of the paper (conciseness is rewarded with opportunity to be seen) - the expert reads the 2 or more papers and is only asked to sort/rank them, without any implied support since most of the time all the papers wwere nonsense, yet the site demands sorting them by (in)credibility - the result is interesting outsider papers by domain (without the coming and going of news cycles, since the papers are selected at random, and hence undergo brownian motion up and down)
ska 8y ago
Self-publishing is definitely the domain of cranks. It's just not the exclusive domain of cranks. The real problem with this isn't that there is nothing worth reading being presented, but that the signal to noise ratio is just terrible. You can waste an inordinate amount of time looking fruitlessly - I can't blame anyone for deciding it isn't worthwhile.