Through last 3-4 decades, there is significant technical advancement in many fields like faster computers; precision equipments; softwares/models; e-books/journals; etc. It is expected that with these advancements the standard and quality of research must be better. But there is an argument that the research standard has not improved with that of technical advancement, instead it has reduced the analytical ability; reading and writing habits; copy & paste culture; plagiarism; etc.
According to you, to what extent these advancements have impacted the research standards and out put quality??
I don't believe such correlated reductions exist. To me, research standards are, or should be, largely independent of technology advancements, e.g., awareness, thoroughness, objectivity, scientific testing, logical reasoning, and a concentration on the fundamentals are some of the elements contributing to research standards/qualities. Also, I feel that we should strive for achieving and maintaining only one, generally accepted standard, not a plethora of so-called standards --- one of the nice things about standards is there are so many of them! :-)
I agree with you Narasimha that poor quality articles appear in journals. As you say breathtaking discoveries are being made but low quality publications abound.
To me, the advent of technology has improved the research outputs of today going by the new findings of collaborative studies. The only drawback is that most research that lack depth and shallow emerge as a result of some solo work that are published in non peer reviewed journals.
Thank you Dr. White for your enlightening answer. Yes, research should be independent of technology, but I feel research standards/quality can better with advanced technology, as it helps in better data collection & analysis. Of course interpretation should be done by the researcher & not to be left to the technology. Thank you once again for the valuable points.
Thank you Dr. Philias and Dr. Ranjit for your responses.
Yes Dr. Philias, there is lack of depth in research findings in spite of so many advances in technology. This may be one of the negetives of the technology (unfortunately) as it has made collection and analysis easier (along with perfection), due to this researchers have to some extent become complacent and lethargic (not thinking too much). I too agree with you that now a days the stress is given towards "number" of publications than "quality/standard" of publication.
No, N. B., research STANDARDS, should be. After my first comment, I realized you were not taking "standard" to mean what I misinterpreted, a high bar document guiding the exemplar quality of the research and it's published results, if you will, established by broad consensus of a technical community; apparently you meant rather simply the quality of typical published research results which I agree can be pretty low, especially without proper peer review.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Writing