PLOS ONE editors evaluate research on the basis of scientific validity, rigorous methodology, and high ethical standards, with the aim of making all well-conducted research freely available.

Hello Pedro

Yes there is possible. But to be honest it doesn't depends on single parameters.

Kindly share more details. Thanks.

There's really no such thing as negative results. It's called not being able to reject the null, and constitutes a result in itself. You then just have to develop a new hypothesis

If your results discussed well and your methodology is scientifically sound, you can publish in PloS ONE. This journal is found to publish papers that are based on scientific methodology regardless the type of the results (For sure you should have results that scientifically correct, but you could not reject the null hypothesis).

Good luck,

Here is the link

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/

PLOS ONE editors evaluate research on the basis of scientific validity, rigorous methodology, and high ethical standards, with the aim of making all well-conducted research freely available.

@Pedro Henrique Lima Alencar,

Please take a look at the link below.

https://www.nature.com/articles/471448e

Trying to get details

Yes, it is possible...!!!

Negative results in environmental science , I never heard this type of journal. If any may be non SCI journal. However such article may be useful up to certain extent, save the repetition of work.

Hi Anita,

'negative results' are often a question of the research perspective.

Probably you have to re-formulate the question - then the result fit into a regular scientific journal.

In the past, '42' was an unexpected answer - just because the actual question was not clear.:-)

Good luck, Michael

Dear Pedro Henrique Lima Alencar,

do you have some negative results in Biomedicine, which are, however, positive in geoscience etc? In that case, change journal/scope.

But if you are looking for a journal that strictly publishes negative results, or failed experiments etc. I can completely agree with you, that his is interesting, yet (seemingly) non-existent.

Yet, I believe there is great demand for this. Publishing only the very finest results, completely ignoring all the attempts and time it takes to get these results, creates a very pressurized environment for scientist, especially younger scientists. There is a further implication in this, that people are often looking for certain results (may it be a number or an observation), instead of focussing on the experiment itself. This is, of cause, a time issue. We have a certain time to finish a project, which is initially aimed to meet a goal, which needs to be presented in a certain (fixed) number of papers in high ranked journals. Thus, there is no time to spend time to put your failed experiment into words, and then publish, maybe from a different perspective.

Further, someone then needs to review the failed experiment mansucript. who really wants to do this, on top of the perfect-experiment mansucript.

I could imagine, that a platform, similar to github, would work for this. (Github is mostly used for open source or collective programming. One author manages the main version/text, and co-authors/ other researchers may comment, ask questions or help with ideas how to proceed, post their version of a similar experiment that failed. There would be minimal time required to prepare a mansucript, it could be changed later (version control lets you track these changes). And our time spend on failed experiments would be singular (only we did it, the next person is already smarter) and not in vain.

Or, another idea, it should be ok to publish the "bad data" in an extra appendix. Like, "all the ways that did not work leading up to this awesome mansucript". E.g., in a hydrochemistry set-up, name alle the pH settings that did not work initially but which you have tried. Paints a more realistic picture how research actually works, and the time required for an "awesome" set of data.

Just an idea. Obviously, this has been rolling around my head for a while. This homeoffice certainly gives you (too much) time.

Best,

Jessica

As a general rule, journals in the area of water resources and hydrology do not encourage negative results. In the specific case of hydrologic modeling, negative results or the failure to the model to mimic data is important. It can reveal the limitations of the model and therefore caution potential users against misuse of models. However, the current trend is to emphasize the positives and to downplay the drawbacks.

This journal is specific for any results that have not been able to fit in to a full narrative for traditional publication. Publications are allowed in a variety of subjects including earth and environmental science :)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/experimental-results