4 ms·

Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough

25 points by lentoutcry 1y ago

y-curious 1y ago
My former PI was a generally terrible person that thankfully no longer has that role. He said something to our group once which summarizes OP's article quite well: "There is no journal of negative results." It's a crappy attitude, but it's true; If you don't make a breakthrough, you won't publish. If you don't publish, you don't eat. During your introduction to the scientific method in high school, they conveniently leave out the part about needing to be a politician in order to succeed in science.
- lentoutcry 1y ago
  to be completely fair, journals of negative results have popped up in some fields, but I've never really heard anyone mentioning any paper published in such a journal
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
jltsiren 1y ago
This sounds like something written by an administrator. Someone who used to be an active scientist but then chose an administrative career. I'd say that the biggest barriers to progress are the people who choose to take the easy path. Progress has always depended on people doing what they believe in. Not because of the institutions and incentives, but despite them. External sources of motivation can help to a degree, but they will eventually fail, as people learn to game them. Then there are a lot of claims that falsely generalize the way things were done in the niche the author was in to the rest of science. Like authors paying article processing fees when not mandated by funders or institutions. Or that scientific publishing is about publishing the results (rather than, for example, committing to a specific version of the argument you are making). Or that a paper is a result of years of work. Or that people are afraid of being scooped, instead of talking about their ongoing work with other people in the field.
- ashwinsundar 1y ago
  The second paragraph literally says "I'm a scientist". Scientists do things other than pipette liquids and stain slides all day. They also get to think about the meta details of their field and try to solve them, which it sounds like what this author is after. I think a lot of proof is given in the article about the claims that you suggest are "false generalizations". What "niche" field do you think the author works in, where these issues with publishing only apply there and no where else? More importantly, in what scientific fields is the publishing system actually working? Those would be effective counter-examples, and I'd genuinely be interested in learning why it works for those fields. The whole "easy path" argument you're making is totally incomprehisible. Just say whatever it is that you're trying to say. Unless you're saying that scientists should just "care more", and their problems will be solved.
  - jltsiren 1y ago
    The article also says "I help oversee billions of dollars in funding across several science and technology organizations.", which is clearly an administrative activity. It's also easy to find what the author currently does. Administrative track is an established part of the academia. Many professors choose it for a variety of reasons, including interests, ambitions, and a diminished ability to contribute to research. Those people have a background in research, but they are administrators, not active researchers. Science consists of many niches – many fields and subfields – each of which has its own norms and practices. People with limited exposure to the breadth of scientific research often assume that other fields are similar to the fields they are familiar with. The generalizations I mentioned in my last paragraph were examples of that. Focusing on "the system" is an example of administrative thinking. It's the idea that science is a uniform centralized machine, where the administrators on top make the strategic choices and the people in the field execute them. Actual science is an unholy mess of people, formal and informal organizations, and connections between them. It works in a thousand different ways. Attempts to impose uniformity often make it worse, until people find ways to work around the system. The system cannot be fixed, because each field works in different ways. Attempts to change it typically make it better for some fields and worse for some others. Instead of a single system, you need a thousand different systems. Instead of trying to fix science, you should ask more specific questions, such as how to make algorithm engineering, algorithmic bioinformatics or human pangenomics better. Those are some of the niches I'm familiar with. I don't find anything particularly wrong with the formal publication system in those subfields, because it's only a small sliver of the communication. In addition to papers, we also have preprints, emails, blogs, Slacks, Zoom calls, GitHub, Twitter/Bluesky, conferences, workshops, summer schools, hackathons, and so on. People communicate in various ways, and they have always been doing that. Sure things could be better, but they could also be a lot worse. The actual issues are in the hard administrative constraints, such as funding, jobs, and visas.
gus_massa 1y ago
> This loop generally takes 6–12 months or more. I depends. In physics is like 3 months from the initial submission to the publication of the accepted article. In math there are horror stories of sending a reminder to the editor after 18 month because there is still not a review.
- radioactivist 1y ago
  And in many subfields there is a preprint freely available on the arxiv during those three months.

25 points by lentoutcry 1y ago

My former PI was a generally terrible person that thankfully no longer has that role. He said something to our group once which summarizes OP's article quite well: "There is no journal of negative results." It's a crappy attitude, but it's true; If you don't make a breakthrough, you won't publish. If you don't publish, you don't eat. During your introduction to the scientific method in high school, they conveniently leave out the part about needing to be a politician in order to succeed in science.

lentoutcry 1y ago
to be completely fair, journals of negative results have popped up in some fields, but I've never really heard anyone mentioning any paper published in such a journal

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

jltsiren 1y ago

This sounds like something written by an administrator. Someone who used to be an active scientist but then chose an administrative career. I'd say that the biggest barriers to progress are the people who choose to take the easy path. Progress has always depended on people doing what they believe in. Not because of the institutions and incentives, but despite them. External sources of motivation can help to a degree, but they will eventually fail, as people learn to game them. Then there are a lot of claims that falsely generalize the way things were done in the niche the author was in to the rest of science. Like authors paying article processing fees when not mandated by funders or institutions. Or that scientific publishing is about publishing the results (rather than, for example, committing to a specific version of the argument you are making). Or that a paper is a result of years of work. Or that people are afraid of being scooped, instead of talking about their ongoing work with other people in the field.

ashwinsundar 1y ago
The second paragraph literally says "I'm a scientist". Scientists do things other than pipette liquids and stain slides all day. They also get to think about the meta details of their field and try to solve them, which it sounds like what this author is after. I think a lot of proof is given in the article about the claims that you suggest are "false generalizations". What "niche" field do you think the author works in, where these issues with publishing only apply there and no where else? More importantly, in what scientific fields is the publishing system actually working? Those would be effective counter-examples, and I'd genuinely be interested in learning why it works for those fields. The whole "easy path" argument you're making is totally incomprehisible. Just say whatever it is that you're trying to say. Unless you're saying that scientists should just "care more", and their problems will be solved.
- jltsiren 1y ago
  The article also says "I help oversee billions of dollars in funding across several science and technology organizations.", which is clearly an administrative activity. It's also easy to find what the author currently does. Administrative track is an established part of the academia. Many professors choose it for a variety of reasons, including interests, ambitions, and a diminished ability to contribute to research. Those people have a background in research, but they are administrators, not active researchers. Science consists of many niches – many fields and subfields – each of which has its own norms and practices. People with limited exposure to the breadth of scientific research often assume that other fields are similar to the fields they are familiar with. The generalizations I mentioned in my last paragraph were examples of that. Focusing on "the system" is an example of administrative thinking. It's the idea that science is a uniform centralized machine, where the administrators on top make the strategic choices and the people in the field execute them. Actual science is an unholy mess of people, formal and informal organizations, and connections between them. It works in a thousand different ways. Attempts to impose uniformity often make it worse, until people find ways to work around the system. The system cannot be fixed, because each field works in different ways. Attempts to change it typically make it better for some fields and worse for some others. Instead of a single system, you need a thousand different systems. Instead of trying to fix science, you should ask more specific questions, such as how to make algorithm engineering, algorithmic bioinformatics or human pangenomics better. Those are some of the niches I'm familiar with. I don't find anything particularly wrong with the formal publication system in those subfields, because it's only a small sliver of the communication. In addition to papers, we also have preprints, emails, blogs, Slacks, Zoom calls, GitHub, Twitter/Bluesky, conferences, workshops, summer schools, hackathons, and so on. People communicate in various ways, and they have always been doing that. Sure things could be better, but they could also be a lot worse. The actual issues are in the hard administrative constraints, such as funding, jobs, and visas.

gus_massa 1y ago

> This loop generally takes 6–12 months or more. I depends. In physics is like 3 months from the initial submission to the publication of the accepted article. In math there are horror stories of sending a reminder to the editor after 18 month because there is still not a review.

radioactivist 1y ago
And in many subfields there is a preprint freely available on the arxiv during those three months.