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Do we still need “scientific journals” in the era of ~0 cost publishing? I keep seeing a lot of problems with the journal system as it stands now, and can’t th
by joshspankit 3y ago
Do we still need “scientific journals” in the era of ~0 cost publishing?
I keep seeing a lot of problems with the journal system as it stands now, and can’t think of any benefits that can’t be duplicated by a shift away from it.
- rossdavidh 3y agoI think you are not the only one asking this question. The issue, as best I understand it, is that there is a desire for a source of minimally-vetted scientific papers, something more reliably worth reading than "it's on the internet somewhere". The problem being that current journals in many cases only pretend to offer this, without actually doing so.
- joshspankit 3y agoThat’s the impression I get too, and it seems to boil down to two things: 1. Does the paper hold up to scrutiny by people who understand the subject matter? (Including: Are the facts represented truthfully, is it free from bias, do the calculations and charts actually represent the data, is the experiment viable) 2. Can the results be reproduced by a totally unrelated (and unbiased) team? And it feels like we’re at an excellent time in history where we can handle #1 through collaborative technologies (even a wiki), and 2 can be done better by encouraging those other scientific teams to publishing results along side the first. Am I off-base?