4 ms·
A bit over-egged, but there is not denying there are a raft of problems in academia. On the other hand, observant or not, it's still (nearly ) the only game i
by ska 4y ago
A bit over-egged, but there is not denying there are a raft of problems in academia.
On the other hand, observant or not, it's still (nearly ) the only game in town for some sorts of things that people want to do. Some people pursue that for a long time hoping things will shake out ok for them... as it does very much for some.
- seydor 4y agoSome of these things can be done by anyone yet academia gatekeeps the academic creds for itself. E.g. anyone can do machine learning research, but you can't publish in a journal without being affiliated to a university
- freyr 4y agoThat’s not true at all. Papers come from industry all the time. I know of independent researchers who make up an LLC name and use that as their affiliation. Most people who publish in journals are affiliated with academia simply because that’s where the vast majority of basic research happens.
- jpeloquin 4y agoStart your own journal? It doesn't necessarily matter that citations to it won't be tracked in Scopus or whatever when it's first launched. Even the gatekept academic journals aren't automatically accepted into citation databases and academic search engines, it usually takes several years after they're launched to be fully accepted. Or discard the journal framework entirely—as long as people who are interested in the work can find the work, it's fine. Edit: One of the most important papers in fracture mechanics was published in a campus newsletter. The publication venue doesn't matter that much.
- seydor 4y agoyeah machine learning was not the best example because it does not depend on journal prestige, but pretty much everything else is the publication venue matters very much in most fields. it is rare exception when something is published elsewhere. the bulk of papers need to make it to goodish journals to be ever seen and considered when deciding about funding. Open access misses the target because it only replaces the publishing part, not the prestige part.
- workingon 4y agoAre you a late career researcher by chance? Your comments feel like how things used to be done. I think the most important thing to getting your paper read now (other than being in a nature level journal) is being indexed on google scholar.
- rsfern 4y ago> One of the most important papers in fracture mechanics was published in a campus newsletter. The publication venue doesn't matter that much. I’d be very interested in a link, that sounds cool! One of the more important contributions in grain growth theory (crystalline materials, not food) is a short comment by John von Neumann, where I guess he attended a conference talk and just came up with this elegant topological theory right there. https://u.math.biu.ac.il/~lazarem/von_Neumann_paper.pdf https://u.math.biu.ac.il/~lazarem/von_Neumann_paper.pdf
- jpeloquin 4y ago> I’d be very interested in a link, that sounds cool! Paris' Law, which predicts fatigue crack growth rate, was published in "The Trend in Engineering", which is the University of Washington College of Engineering alumni newsletter. “Though Paris’s ideas presented a way to quantify and predict structural integrity, his approach was considered unconventional, and none of the leading journals published it. So, in January 1961, after leaving the UW to return to Lehigh for his Ph.D., Paris published his paper, ‘A Rational Analytic Theory of Fatigue,’ in The Trend.” https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/article/2021-05-24/pariss-law-celebrates-60-years https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/article/2021-05-24/pari... https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/trend https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/trend
- workingon 4y agoI have multiple papers and none of them have university affiliations. The publishers are more than happy to take basically anyones money to just post your pdf online.
- ska 4y ago> you can't publish in a journal without being affiliated to a university this is not true.