True scholarly achievement resides in well-researched and cited publications. In our current Web 2.0 landscape, publishing has becoming easier and in turn, making it easier to publicly state and propagate ideas of observable phenomena. After studying early works regarding the benefits of Gaming (e.g. Kurt Squire), I noticed a pattern of popular ideas being presented in journals (e.g. Games should be implemented in formal Education) and then circulating throughout the field. It appears a surprising amount of published research is gaining credibility from citations to the paper from new authors rather than well-founded research cited within the paper as support. Historically, influential research cited great works and theories to establish the foundation authors were building upon. In the past twenty years, I notice authors using small sample sizes or stating singular examples and then concluding their educational practices are founded for a large, diverse population. With increased access to an infinite number of opinions online, simply ignoring poorly conducted research doesn't prevent ideas from becoming popular even when the original work lacks a high degree of scholarly citations.
Have the standards been lowered for creditable research and if so, which resources or methodology do you recommend for keeping rigorous publishing standards?
I guess Daniel, from multiple posts on RG regarding the erosion of standards due to the 'flooding' of open access markets, that it's relatively safe to state that standards have dropped. That is not to say that is the case for all open access - but certainly predatory journals (and the like) are rarely concerned with quality and standards - and lure the most vulnerable researchers to the publication market who would often benefit most from good, critical, quality review scrutiny to improve their work. It creates a false sense of quality.
Dear Daniel Justice still now, the publication process in the web of science journals is not that easy and requires good research level! On the other hand, publishing ideas related to what you've described as "popular idea" is quite acceptable and might bring a significant advance in the academic debate IF the researcher adopted a clear, reliable, and valid methodology!
I do find that by and large recent papers do not set the stage well enough anymore, by explaining what this paper is for, who should be interested in it, and what the story of the general picture is, leading up to the new paper offered.
The survey part - which is fundamental to provide, whenever the subject has had a rather long life as a science - is quite often hastily done, focusing almost entirely on recent papers, and taken - apparently it seems - at random, and we definitely not get a clear picture of what came before this one paper, or what, in more generality, is the state-of-the-art. I do know the drill, having written much on how to create a state-of-the-art review, and the current state is in shambles.
Dear Daniel Justice There are two main journal indexing database services these days (WOS and Scopus). WOS is the oldest one with high standards. Whereas, Scopus can be considered relatively a new databse with lower standards and ability to evaluate the indexed journals. Therefore, you can even find some predatory listed journals ( according to Beall's list) are indexd in Scopus, these journals usually publish very low quality articles.
Thank you, gentlemen, I appreciate your interest in this question! Two clarifying statements; this research question is aimed at online publishing and not at research in hard sciences and, "chain-citations" where a blogger cites another online blog/article who cited a previous editorial opinion is an example of what I referred to in the initial research question . Dean Whitehead do you believe this is a result of the Web 2.0 technology revolution and in time issues from the flood of publications will taper? Strange analogy, but perhaps similar to the fad of the beer microbrewing industry, do you believe some of the current publishing outlets and authors will be challenged/vetted by the market? My fear is that ignoring some of these published ideas will evolve into bigger social problems. Amine Moulay agreed, I believe the scientific community is its own vigilant watchdog and science fields have the advantage of reproducible experiments, clear facts and conclusions which can be proven unlike other disciplines which rely more on well articulated philosophies of observable social behaviors. Michael Patriksson valid points about critical elements and I wonder if we will benefit more from taking the long-view, allow time and vetting to elevate the best research or is there an urgent need for a new fact-checking technology or approach that needs to be taken by us, researchers and citizens? Fady M. A Hassouna thank you for sharing these resources, added to my list of investigations! Thank you all again, I feel compelled to actively pursue a remedy to issues we discussed. Your time and words are greatly appreciated! Cheers
Daniel - I believe that it is 'supply and demand' - rather than issues such as Web 2.0 - and that leads to your other question on regulation. The main established publishing houses have focused on competitive monopoly for a long time - and there is no internal/external industry regulatory body. They can do as they please - and they have done so - assuming they were safe from smaller competition. Open access has exposed this isn a radical manner and 'bitten them on the bum' big time. They are now trying to play catch-up - while still protecting monopolies. Quality is bound to suffer in such an unregulated market.
The 'publish or perish' culture has effectively killed what may be described as scholarly activities. What the esteemed colleagues said above are just various manifestations of this.
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