5 ms·

There is a joke that goes: "On an average about a handful of people end up reading your thesis, and you hope your committee is among those few :-)" The subject

by bdhe 15y ago

There is a joke that goes: "On an average about a handful of people end up reading your thesis, and you hope your committee is among those few :-)" The subject of scientific publishing is a very interesting topic. There are multiple issues at stake and I would be very happy if people point out to well written discourse on the following questions. * The state of affairs of journals today, and the open journal movement. Why in the age of the internet, we're stuck in a relatively ancient publishing system. * The gap between popular science and scientific research. This comic was very popular: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 * Whether the onus on popularizing science lies on scientific researchers. In particular, does the public have to take more effort to understand science, or do the scientists have to take more effort to publish both for the community but also for public consumption. Do these skill sets overlap? Can there be scientific "popularizers" who are specialists at writing pop-sci that is accurate yet can be understood by a layperson.

Lewisham 15y ago
Here's a crack: * The state of affairs of journals today, and the open journal movement. Why in the age of the internet, we're stuck in a relatively ancient publishing system.* If you're talking about "why do we have publishers?", then that is a question that you can search HN for, as we often have this discussion about IEEE/ACM. I'm strongly against publishers but not the system of publishing, because we need those peer-review systems. * The gap between popular science and scientific research.* There are multiple factors at work here. 1. Often, researchers are working on something that just can't be sold as popular science. That's why we call them researchers. Particularly in Computer Science, a lot of what you could call "popular science" really means "shipping products." If it's cool enough, it's cool enough to sell it. 2. Many, many universities are very poor at selling research. Exceedingly so. The schools you hear about all the time; MIT, Stanford, etc. are those which can afford big, able PR departments. These guys are also not interested in necessarily selling the facts. MIT are particularly guilty of this, often writing articles like "MIT researchers change the fundamentals of all AI" when its this little incremental step, that, while important, has not set the world on fire and comes with lots of caveats. Popularizing science is not what researchers should be doing. There's this really terrible blame game that happens right now, where it's en vogue to blame scientists and just add more things to their job role. In a university, we're expecting them to: teach, find money for research, perform research, write papers and advise undergraduate/graduate students. Oh, and now they should be responsible for performing scientific outreach, otherwise they're all insular and elitist. That's why companies like Google and Microsoft are becoming so attractive, you get to just do research. That's what your trained for, that's what your career is. If we want to worry about popularizing science and encouraging STEM takeup in young people and all this stuff that we keep hearing about, then you're going to have to hire people to do it. The NSF can start putting money in grants that are ring-fenced to funding a PR department that actually goes and does this stuff. Universities already take 50% out of all research grants anyway, putting them towards library fees and such. Expecting researchers to do it all is becoming more and more untenable.

by bdhe 15y ago

Lewisham 15y ago

Here's a crack: * The state of affairs of journals today, and the open journal movement. Why in the age of the internet, we're stuck in a relatively ancient publishing system.* If you're talking about "why do we have publishers?", then that is a question that you can search HN for, as we often have this discussion about IEEE/ACM. I'm strongly against publishers but not the system of publishing, because we need those peer-review systems. * The gap between popular science and scientific research.* There are multiple factors at work here. 1. Often, researchers are working on something that just can't be sold as popular science. That's why we call them researchers. Particularly in Computer Science, a lot of what you could call "popular science" really means "shipping products." If it's cool enough, it's cool enough to sell it. 2. Many, many universities are very poor at selling research. Exceedingly so. The schools you hear about all the time; MIT, Stanford, etc. are those which can afford big, able PR departments. These guys are also not interested in necessarily selling the facts. MIT are particularly guilty of this, often writing articles like "MIT researchers change the fundamentals of all AI" when its this little incremental step, that, while important, has not set the world on fire and comes with lots of caveats. Popularizing science is not what researchers should be doing. There's this really terrible blame game that happens right now, where it's en vogue to blame scientists and just add more things to their job role. In a university, we're expecting them to: teach, find money for research, perform research, write papers and advise undergraduate/graduate students. Oh, and now they should be responsible for performing scientific outreach, otherwise they're all insular and elitist. That's why companies like Google and Microsoft are becoming so attractive, you get to just do research. That's what your trained for, that's what your career is. If we want to worry about popularizing science and encouraging STEM takeup in young people and all this stuff that we keep hearing about, then you're going to have to hire people to do it. The NSF can start putting money in grants that are ring-fenced to funding a PR department that actually goes and does this stuff. Universities already take 50% out of all research grants anyway, putting them towards library fees and such. Expecting researchers to do it all is becoming more and more untenable.