JAWWS Links for June

In which many people on Twitter complain about science publishing

There are still a few hours left in June, so let’s quickly list everything interesting I saw in the past few weeks about science writing, publishing, and communication 🙂. See here for the previous (May) roundup.

Twitter

A few instances of everybody’s favorite genre of tweet — complaints about scientific publishing:

Stu Maitland @StuMaitland

Just had a paper rejected; one of the reasons was "not using references from 2022". Dear reader, the paper has been in review for over 6 months

You know a system is broken when it requires you to actually foresee the future in order to pass all the hoops.

Alice Evans @_alice_evans

@jasoncrawford I would be so unsatisfied if I only wrote journal articles that a dozen people read. That would be a colossal waste. Like fritting away a fortune on booze.

Indeed! It’s not totally a waste, since the journal record has other functions than distributions, but I can’t help thinking how deeply demotivating it is to write something that you know no one will read.

Erik Hoel @erikphoel

I think people think that the scientific record is somehow, like, objectively correct. This is just straight up not true. Most scientific papers are wildly incorrect about a bunch of stuff.

Yes, important reminder: scientific papers are full of BS.

rohit @krishnanrohit

coming to sincerely believe that the difference between a blogpost and an academic paper is that one of them is much easier to read and understand

And as a corollary: unless you absolutely need the prestige gain from publishing in a respected journal (e.g. for securing a job or funding), it’s better to write a blog post.

On the other hand, there are advantages to scientific papers over blogs. One of them is that there is no norm in blogging of making sure that you have covered the current state of knowledge:

Michael is back in San Francisco, soon in Santa Fe @michael_nielsen

One somewhat unfortunate thing about blogging culture is that (unlike journals) there's no strong norm of explaining where your work sits with respect to existing human understanding. This is an enormous advantage journals have in pushing forward understanding. https://t.co/Lh7Ose8zGH

I wonder if there’s a solution to this for general online writing that doesn’t involve recreating scientific papers. (Let me know here if you have any ideas!)

Speaking of references, here’s a little thread on the tradeoff between citing many references and telling a good story:

Adam Davidson @adamdavidson

Dear Academia, I understand that citing others' work is crucial to you. But writing clearly, powerfully, for a broad audience is, also, crucial. It is very hard to write compellingly while also constantly citing research. 1/

My first thought is that perhaps it would be a good idea to have different sections in a paper do different things. In an intro that aims at acquainting the reader with existing literature, then use references, yes. But only after having made sure that your point is clear without too much interference from citations.

On format:

Nikos Bosse @nikosbosse

The world would be a better place if the default publishing format for scientific papers were HTML rather than PDF

Yes. Papers should move online from the most part and make use of advanced technologies like hyperlinks.

Lastly, this thread — and the associated article — is great. It’s by a scientist who decided to quit giving his labor to for-profit journals as an editor or peer reviewer:

Dan Goodman @neuralreckoning

The current system of journals and peer review is not serving science. I have therefore resigned from all editorial roles and will no longer do pre-publication peer review. I explain why in this article and in the thread below. Please consider joining me.

neural-reckoning.orgEnding support for legacy academic publishing

A summary of his justifications and recommendations:

• (Pre-publication) peer review is not that reliable since it rests on only 2-3 reviewers, few mistakes are found, and even fewer are fixed

• Peer review is also often of bad quality, since there’s no incentive to do a good work as a reviewer (you’re not paid to do it)

• Peer review is not transparent

• A better system would involve quick publication with post-publication peer review. You know, like in every other kind of publishing (including pre-1970s science).

• Pre-publication peer review need not be banished, but should become optional

• The current system is wasteful in time, effort, and money.

Articles

There’s a correlation between how much an article is cited and whether it was tweeted about early on. From a publication called Ear, Nose & Throat Journal. Pleasantly short and easy to read.

This is a bit old, but describes the problems with science well, and suggests solutions: The Speed of Science

YouTube

I rarely watch videos, but this one by Sabine Hossenfelder about how we deal with new scientific language was illuminating: