Hi Asif,

I'd say it's problematic if the editor pursues it too much. I can envision scenarios where someone who only wants to continue a line of previously started research may be rejected because the editor may not consider extensions of something already established to be "novel" enough.

Have a great day!

--Adrian

No i think that science has a problem with the novelty per se.

Generally every 10-20 years the same ideas are presented as the new ones.

We need more experimental data in life sciences. Physicist be mere measyrement of microwave bacgroun radiation has mede a tremendous progress in understanding the origin of universe and time as the variable.

Prof Richard Muller book on "NOW the PHYSICS OF TIME" is a unique example how to build a theories which can be falsified/verified experimentally.

We like measurements like this for example in neurosciences.

So real novelty is very important. Sometimes is just the introduction of new words/definitions insted of explaing the physical mechanisms.

How thing works its a major question of real scientist ???

Jerzy

I would say, "novelty must be an essential component for any journal".

And it is; already. Everywhere. In any context you can think of!

In fact, it is in practice all through the civilizational history of mankind. You will not find two "identical" writing works in any culture, history, civilization; if you do, one has to be a case of plagiarism. This means that the human sense of recording facts and opinions are ALWAYS centered around something new. That is novelty.

You pick any journal, from any genre, and you will find that every article has something new. If any article does not provide something new, then it is not worth reading (and hence, not worth publishing). Any piece of article that repeats the same message imparted before is as worthy as trash, is not it? Think yourself: if there is an article telling you the "mere fact" that Donald Trump trumped Clinton in the 2016 election, why should you read it? Why should anyone write it, and publish it? This is an old news. So, this news appeared back then, and it did not appear again (and will not appear again). Likewise, histone acetylation by the p300 enzyme supports transcription. It is a known fact, and you won't see it anywhere again "per se"; but this experiment CAN be included in a "new" study "as a control". That adds to novelty. Similarly, most galaxies contain supermassive blackholes at their centers. This fact, merely, will not be the focus of an article. However, determining the number of smaller blackholes surrounding the SgrA* supermassive blackhole in our own galactic center did make a news. This fact "solely" is not going to be the focus of another article ever again!

In Science (or elsewhere), there is no meaning in reporting the "already-known". Every scientist/science researcher is working towards finding something new. May it be a new concept, a new approach to solving an old problem; a new way of interpreting an established set of results; a new way of using an existing dataset; a new use of an existing drug...and so on.

What is novelty? It is the quality of being new, while also being original. And what is research? Finding something new. And what is a science journal? It is a journal reporting some new advancement in science.

You may now raise the issue of a review article, which restates the messages contained in a group of previously published articles. Is that novelty? Yes, it is. Because, review articles gather information from various sources, synthesize an interpretable notion, and present this notion to an audience; such that the synthesized notion "did not exist in totality" in any of the source materials. That is a new way of looking at a collection of old facts.

As I mentioned above, humans are wired to record things that are new. Research Journals are the medium of recording scientific advancement; therefore, it is natural that the emphasis has to be on novelty. There is no alternative. Besides, Science Journals must make a profit in order to exist, and to avoid extinction. And, to remain financially viable, they must emphasize on novelty (otherwise, who will buy their issues?).

Or, did I misunderstand your question?

Hi Asif,

I'd say it's problematic if the editor pursues it too much. I can envision scenarios where someone who only wants to continue a line of previously started research may be rejected because the editor may not consider extensions of something already established to be "novel" enough.

Have a great day!

--Adrian

Daniel, I would say it a bit differently. It is the perceived demand of the "quantity" of novelty, but not novelty itself, that could be considered problematic by some. Novelty must be there; no question about it. The question is, how much.

Science is growing at a frenetic pace, and so is the media of reporting scientific progress. The advancement in available technologies has made data collection relatively easier (comparing 2018 to 1998, or even 1978), and this has contributed to the demands of more data. Besides, different scientific questions today are perceived as related to a wider collection of scientific fields/subfields than a couple decade ago. This massively widens the perspective of any research (necessitating data collection from a wider focal area with greater number of controls), inflating the size of an average article. Because there is competition among the journals, this trend becomes increasingly demanding. Besides, not only the journals, but also the researchers themselves tend to pack enormous quantity of data with the hope that the review process could be somewhat easier (which, invariably, demands some more data). We like it or not, we consider it problematic or not, the "publish or perish" motto leaves us no easy room to breath. That is the new reality. That is what we need to adapt to.

Perhaps it won't be out-of-context; but most new-generation researchers would not believe that the 1999 paper from the Nobelist Roger Kornberg remains the shortest full-scale article in Cell, at mere FOUR pages (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(00)80551-6). That paper had a paradigm-shifting influence on how we perceived enzymatic restructuring of chromatin at the basic nucleosomal level. This contribution was massive to the field. But those days are long gone...

Asif, I am not sure how much of evolution Ed Young understands. If there was a way to ask the question "how do you feel about evolution?" to those hundreds of millions of species who became extinct due to Darwinian selection (not considering catastrophe) over the last 2-3 billion years, they all would have replied in one word: Gross. And this is everywhere, not just science. And there are two ways to look at it: (1) it is gross, let me get out of here; and (2) this is the reality, let me try to stay on the path.

Choice is ours.