Actual and excellent question, Dear José. Thanks for sharing. I concur somehow with Behrouz. Filtering is the keyword. I learned long time ago with older colleagues that it is enough sometimes take a look to the abstract and to the conclusions of a work for seeing if the work may be of interest and is pertinent for our research or not.

Because of availability of large number of journals and conferences, It is much harder now to read all articles on the subject than it was 20 years ago when I did my M.Eng (before internet). I remember that I had to go to McGill library, take the CD-ROMS, read the abstracts and then order the pertinent articles.

It is easy to choose and filter out the articles by doing an expert search (available for example in SCIENCEDIRECT) and using as many keywords (or other criteria) as possible quick glance at the abstracts. Reading survey and review articles is also a good strategy to save time.

"In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING. Filter the information: extract for knowledge.

Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance. 

Filter third for reliability.”

 ― Marc Stiegler, David's Sling

Thank you for asking, dear José. 

Oooh... Do I face particular problems? How do I deal with them? Crushed by mountains of data and drowned by oceans of unrelated information flows...

I try to think sometimes. I try to formulate not very displaced questions to those who know better in their field and to think on the answers. (Assuming that my main task is to establish for myself a more global meaningful picture in order to navigate in the ocean.) In any case, one cannot make an information system without knowing how the knowledge is structured, so... One day we can stop Internet for 3 hours to see what will happen... Psychological experiment (several papers will appear, I guess.)

Velina

Dear Jose,

I was fortunate and had available an offer for early retirement on a favorable pension from my formal position that I was able to take advantage of (which allows me the spare-time to conduct and direct my own research ... and to decide how I want to divide my day between work and play); that is the ONLY thing that has enabled me to PRETEND to cope with the AVALANCHE! *hee*hee* Otherwise, I imagine I would be deeply buried, by now (like so many of my contemporary colleagues are, who are keeping-up a brave-front and lying-thru-their-teeth in an attempt to convince everyone they are on-top-of-it ... especially in having to contend with the Millennial Generation who are waiting-in-line with-their-iPhones-always-in-hand just waiting their chance to show-up any old-duffer, beat-him-on-the-fast-draw with their nimble-deadly-fast-googling-thumbs to answer the supervisor's latest question, and kissing-up & brown-nosing in order to get into better favor to steal the poor-old-slow-fellow's position the first moment he should falter ... God help the poor-old-bumbling-dinosaur who has to ever leave-a-meeting and actually physically shuffle his carcass through his hurried-but-slow-and-painful arthritic walk-of-shame back to his office and use his antediluvian PC to retrieve a needed piece of data, or heaven-forbid, a non-digital report PRINTED-ON-PAPER ... *ack-k--k-k-k-k* ... that is guaranteed extinction ... or at-the-very-least a sure-fire inter-office-indictment for being criminally insensitive to the Amazonian rainforest  < tangential curmudgeonly thought: AS IF there weren't any f**king trees chopped-down to make the iPhones that seems to have become a permanent part of the anatomy of every one of these young enviromentally-correct techroids ... none of whom has ever even spent a single night in a forest, and only knowledge of the Amazon rainforest is a greenish-brown blur through a break in the clouds from 35000-feet whilst jetting over it on the way to vacation in Rio ... or, how many were sacrificed to make each of the stupidly over-powered and over-priced sports-cars that many of them drive ... which I suppose help them with maintaining their escapist fantasies of being some kind of movie or video-game character, some persona they ALL seem to have emulated ...or some bizarre amalgam of several favorites  ... rather than having developed "real" personalities of their own?>)! Even with all the new-found spare-time, there are ever deepening "snow-drifts" [or "dunes," for those reading from more xeric environments] of partially-read PAPER books and articles beginning to pile-up around my office ... and, I have had to purchase 4-terra-bytes of new storage space for my PERSONAL PC in the past year, just for the increase in my CASUAL digital research materials/documentation/databases!

How do I cope? When I become overwhelmed by the effort, I take a nap to re-fresh myself for the struggle ... hah haha ha ah aha ha hah ahaha aha hahha

Regards,

Bob

PS - I "own" over 200 "smart" devices ... including some iPhones but mostly Android-based smart-phones and tablets [in my *spare* time I took-up a bad-habit of repairing the "cracked" and "ceased functioning" ones for family & friends, and developed a fondness for "hacking" and re-programming them, and developing Android apps for "fun" [good exercise for an old deteriorating brain ... and actually fun to be able to make your "Angry Birds" ... and grinning smug little piggies ... react in strange ways, too!], many of which were gifted-to-me by folks who ineluctably find they MUST upgrade to the newest version (out of peer-pressure status/ego considerations, albeit their 1-year-old phones are still working just-fine *sigh* the chain-saws must be reverberating happily throughout Amazonia!). I use them as compact, light-weight, self-contained "brains" (with ready-made included eyes-and-ears and communications packages) for my drone and robot research [play] ... and for one on a pension, one cannot beat the cost of FREE ;-)

There is an explosion of information happening, yet people demand quick access to relevant content that cuts through the clutter. ~ Anne M. Mulcahy

Dear Jorge,

Data what is data, nothing else than words, numbers, estimations, projections, a battle with absurdity and nightmarish.  Data is the image of a false science that has to be communicated with the mass.

Data on fat people in the USA, data on diet and the consequences, data on evaluating a phase 1 or 2 antidrug that very likely will be stopped in phase 3, data on phonetics, data on linguistics, data on work conditions, data on no food effect in human survive – (a typical example of scientific work in Africa), data on the role of media on politics, data on the effect of the 1st lady dress in the political impact of the X government, data on the cows of the queen of England and their effect in atmospheric pollution, data  -  no sense data everywhere.

Of course, other important data that we should see and be aware are NOT visible. The No of soldiers who died by leukemia and cancer during the Yugoslavia and Golf wars, data on the role of junk food on our children autoimmune diseases and neuron development.

Thousands of data thousands of works and still – as an example, pénicilline and Alexander Fleming from 1928 remains the major force in modern medicine.  What could be medicine without antibiotiques?  

Very soon we will need to distinguish administrators and scientists. Big companies as also the Academics think that we could function on the basis of an administration-type of science, a bureaucratic and Kafkaesque organization.  So, the decision is up to every one of us. Follow the main stream or create.  Data is an enormous utopia.

Actual and excellent question, Dear José. Thanks for sharing. I concur somehow with Behrouz. Filtering is the keyword. I learned long time ago with older colleagues that it is enough sometimes take a look to the abstract and to the conclusions of a work for seeing if the work may be of interest and is pertinent for our research or not.

Comes to us more and more information, we experience their increasingly and increasingly become an object of manipulation, understood as efforts to achieve the defined our perception of information or specific behavior. The fundamental factors konstytuującymi present reality is a flood of information, the increasing pace of life and the growing amount of changes. The same phenomenon of excess / information overload It is not something new in the twenty-first century. However, the characteristic feature is its severity. The phenomenon of oversupply of information has existed for centuries. We know complaining about "flood of books" since the time of Martin Luther. Upon emergence of the Internet supply of information of every kind has become quite elusive. The phenomenon of flooding information is so dangerous that - according to US media critic Neil Postman - A further increase in information can cause flooding and generates "attacks the immune system," which is just a symptom of information overload.

Information overload is due to continuous excessive attack our attention by the information. Currently, the greatest danger are, however, almost unlimited possibilities for manipulation of information rather than their quantity. The manipulation of information is the manipulation of man as a recipient of information. The same phenomenon of information overload is seen as "a symptom of the age of large information technology", a kind of stress information. About this phenomenon was already written in 1755.

I believe that the information overload problem derivative with respect to the tools to access the information and its filtering / selection. The man who remembers everything lives constantly in discomfort

mental, so his psyche is not quite normal. Remembering it makes sense only when it is selective. Today is different, everything is remembered, and the network is and what posting a notable scientists and what they write the worst morons. The mass of information makes it impossible to understand the messages conveyed.

Regards

I'm a retired person and not suffering from information explosion directly. I think however that, in order to deal with the situation at the forefront of research, it would be useful to foster a keen eye to choose the best kind of information among overflowing articles and data.

Dear José, let me tell you a short story about my own situation, thus:

I have aswed a number of a few question here on RG. Those question have had to do with lines of my work and research. Except in one occasion, all my question have received very few answers and comments. Luckily for me, in this sense:

In my fields of work and interest there is not much literature -not as much as in numerous other domains-. So far I still can cope with the pace of the massive production around the world.

(Between brackets, I am speaking about issues such as complexity theory, non-classical logics, or digital humanities. There is much information about them, but bearable, still very much bearable...).

Jorge Eduardo me parece muy interesante tu articulo. considero que la revisión epistemológica de las diferentes ciencias del comportamiento humano es una disciplina de los que hacen ciencia. Todos los que hacemos investigación descubrimos hallazgos importantes, en nuestro caso la ciencia de la educación en el área de evaluación educativa pretendemos explicar porque razones los estudiantes aprenden o no aprenden tal o cual disciplina.

Pretendemos explicar con estudios explicativos que varianza tiene mas peso en los factores asociados (la familia, la escuela el aula de clases, los recursos, la infraestructura, el background de los docentes, el financiamiento, la cultura escolar, el personal directivo, la formación inicial de los docentes, entre otros) que inciden en los aprendizajes de los estudiantes en cualquier nivel educativo.

Creo finalmente, que debemos priorizar y para ello recomiendo que los investigadores estemos inscritos en bases de datos elsevier por ejemplo, eric, rediac, a las que yo pertenezco donde encuentro avances y tendencias de investigaciones de las disciplinas universitarias de mi interes.

Arturo rivera . Universidad Especializada de las Americas.

Wise decision, dear Anne. RG is partly a delicious addiction, partly a joy, and also a collaborative network.

I personally come to it instead of, say, playing sudoku, solving puzzles, and the like.

Like Ivo, I also feel that libraries are of great importance.  My experience in the close to 37 years that I worked in the US Govt was that there is almost nothing more helpful than a good resource librarian.  Over recent years, however, in my particular experience, it became more and more difficult to get such help, as librarians were virtually phased out, and nearly extinct when I retired.  The assumption, it seems, was that with the internet, and access to JSTOR, we could do everything ourselves, just as the advent of the PC appeared to make secretaries nearly obsolete.  But doing 'everything yourself' becomes an impossibility in due course.  Today there is a great deal of information available, and we are often on smartphones and other devices, but the tendency seems to perhaps be toward more superficial information.  A good resource librarian can be a very helpful partner.  It is very helpful to have access to a lot of information, and I do not want to have it filtered too much by anyone, but I do think that help in obtaining interlibrary loans and tracking down some works is still very important.

Comments about the importance of abstracts, and I think "key word" lists, are well placed here.  One needs to be able to quickly search for papers and textbooks of interest.  Relying too much on a narrow set of authors can stifle new ideas, so I try not to pay too much attention to that.  Search terms used in internet research require that papers and textbooks have features that search engines will find, so it becomes more important to know what words and phrases to use in those searches. 

Information availability and retrieval has changed rapidly, and will continue to change.  In general, it has to be for the better, but I'm reminded of the axiom that "Although there is no progress without change, not all change is progress" (John Wooden). 

PS - Arturo Rivera referred to databases which, like JSTOR, I suppose may be helpful.  

Dear All,

As Dr. Ivo Carneiro de Sousa said, It is impossible to follow, match and even inventory everything that comes out daily, monthly, yearly in almost every scientific domain. Therefore, I strongly harmonize with Dr. Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan and Dr. António Manuel Abreu Freire Diogo that Filtration and read the abstract and conclusion part of articles can be prolific to get data. On the other hand, in my opinion, if we had been an active member of expertly social networks such as Reseachgate, we could partake to expertly debates related to our interest to take requirement data and be update in that issue.

Artur: "So I said: "Where are the humanities, the Arts & Letters?" Science and Technology will not provide the solutions we, the society are in need of."

Very important point. Hm... Perhaps one day we will relise that making science is an art and will develop or regulate the use of technologyes in order to not damage the nature of humans.  Society develops based on the interaction of  "complete" human beings and we cannot deviate a lot.  How long will the auto-corrective mechaism of society take in order to fit better human nature, we don't know.

Greetings to all... 

and thanks to José Eduardo for the really "burning" request / question.... 

@James R.Knaub..."nearly extinct when I retired"   ... "But doing 'everything yourself' becomes an impossibility in due course.".  . "tendency seems to perhaps be toward more superficial information":      José, how right you are!...  I never had that less time / was pinched for time than shortly prior to and now (that) I am retired! I would like to add that specific information = publications  (right "keywording " will be essential) CAN be found BUT most of the time / for the most part end up in "PPV"= “Pay Per View” articles (especially valid for scientific biological &medical publications 1950ies up to 2015). I spent a lot of my private money the last 25-30 years to get the information hidden in such PPV-articles (ok, yes,  I could have got [AND REALLY HAVE GOT] such articles also by library loaning...  but got article copy/copies often in poor quality sometimes only after 4-5 week waiting). Further comments would be possible here but I like to stop here...  with Season's Greetings to everywhere and everyone out there.

Cheer up and become goodwill ambassadors....Festive (holi)days, Merry Christmas and a Happy, healthy, prosperous and successful New Year to you all, warm regards, Wolfgang

The explosion in access to mobile phones and digital services means that people everywhere are contributing vast amounts of information to the global knowledge warehouse. Moreover, they are doing so for free, just by communicating, buying and selling goods and going about their daily lives. ~ Ban Ki-moon

Dear José,

Your question is well-timed and appropriate. I can say that my opportunities help me. At our university or faculty library there are no up-to date books and practically no journals.  Fortunately, internet resources are available and abundant thus I can find what I need. I think the desire to read and learn all the possible relevant publications, is a vain hope. Therefore, I am satisfied to find and use what I really need.    

Dear Anna and Carlos,

We should be masters of our computers and not inversely.

Dear all, this info overload means that we get most of our literature free, and get it quite easily.  Recently I published a paper on motivation, and now each time I click on Home in RG, there will be papers related to self determination theory, and other related areas that RG is bringing to my attention.  So my attention is more to reading research papers than to be on Q and A.  But there's a need to set up limits as to what each of us can do.  Thanks.

Filtering out and avoiding extra and unwanted information/data, etc.

Dear Jose,

Thanks a lot lot for this question.

In my area of interest I select publications according to the following criteria: my priorities, the works conducted in my team, the methodology of the studies and the publications authors finally.

One thing we might keep in mind while trying to narrow our literature searches is that at the same time, we also have a great opportunity today to enrich our perspectives.  Paradigms can be useful, but we also need to think 'out of the box.'  We can sample methodologies from other fields.  ResearchGate can help one accomplish this.

"The constant dilemma of the information age is that our ability to gather a sea of data greatly exceeds the tools and techniques available to sort,extract, and apply the information we've collected"       ~Jeff Davidson

Understanding Information Overload

Information Overload is an increasing problem both in the workplace, and in life in general. Those that learn to deal with it effectively will have a major advantage in the next few years.

Information Overload is when you are trying to deal with more information than you are able to process to make sensible decisions. The result is either that you either delay making decisions, or that you make the wrong decisions.

It is now commonplace to be getting too many e-mails, reports and incoming messages to deal with them effectively.

The Information Overload Age

The first recorded use of the phrase “information overload” was used by the futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970, when he predicted that the rapidly increasing amounts of information being produced would eventually cause people problems.

The root of the problem is that, although computer processing and memory is increasing all the time, the humans that must use the information are not getting any faster. Effectively, the human mind acts as a bottleneck in the process

http://www.infogineering.net/understanding-information-overload.htm

Dear András, I do not have problems with that. We should be masters of our computers.

However, the truth is that the relationship with computers in general has radically changed. We share our own life, to some extent with them. One example: our emails to our friends, RG posts, social networks, etc., etc.

I think dealing with a bulky information in the specific field needs experience to sort and take advantage. on another side, these bulky information makes easier for the researchers identify the problem after picking up useful information from other experiences.

Dear Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan,

It is interesting you mention Alvin Toeffler, who was a "guiding light" for me; I began following his writings during my first year in college in 1970. It is regrettable I didn't pay close-enough attention to his sage predictions to know I should invest in the early ventures of Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, and the IPOs of their first companies ... so that I would be a "feelthy rich" billionaire [like Donald Trump is] today! Hah ah aha ha aha ha ha!

His guidance was, however, invaluable in convincing me of the increasing importance that computers would certainly have in EVERYONE's everyday lives in coming years, and how much advantage a person who learned computer science would have in that soon-to-come world ... so I guess I learned-more-than-I-earned (especially after doing the opposite of Toeffler, looking toward the past rather than the future ... deciding to become an archaeologist rather than a computer-scientist) ;-)

Regards,

Bob

Dear Jose,

My first memories of the Internet go back a long-way, to the summer of 1976, when it was called the ARPANET, and a few of us guys (at select universities doing research under contract for the US Army, so with a connection or node on the ARPANET) had a buddy who was sys-op and would allow us to "patch-in" our terminals in the quiescent hours after midnight (it's called "hacking" nowadays, but the term wasn't even invented, then, since phone lines, and phone terminology, were still being used ... in those days, apparently few scientists worked after midnight, not even Army contractors!) to play what was probably the first online adventure game (named, naturally, Adventure, but due to the number-of-characters limitation in DOS, always displayed on-screen as ADVENT) competing cross-country on-screen against teams of other bright-young-rapscallions (mainly in math and computer-science labs at other research institutions with ARPANET nodes, like MIT and Stanford). A-h-h-h-h-h those were the days! But the real nostalgia comes-over-me (breaking like waves you could surf) thinking about the very early days of the public Internet ... before the time there was any advertising ... before there was any spam ... before there was any danger from viruses of hackers ... before there was any PORN ... and everything was so ORDERLY and you could find things. You could actually find what you were looking for, and without a search engine (just by scrolling thru an institutions' HTML indexes)!

Yes, I APPRECIATE that there is a whole UNIVERSE of data available online, now, that wasn't then (and it almost seems worth it to have suffered the decades of being deluged by spam and advertising and porn pop-ups and viruses and virus-scans and overseas-ISP-never-helpful-tech-line-helpers [who never seemed to speak or understand the same dialect of English I do] to have finally received the Heaven-sent blessing of Google Books).

But, if there was only some way to take the Internet back closer to the way it was in the beginning ... (yes, I realize one can NEVER do away with the advertising ... but) if there were only some way ... some search engine that could search-out and present ONLY what you were specifically looking for (and filter-out all the porn, wipe-off all the commercially-oriented tripe, expunge the inane and ridiculous ... and sort the results in order of reliability). 

Maybe Google could "improve" their search-engine by separating their page into halves ... half being the actual search results for what you were looking for ... and the other half devoted to flashing you with the advertising they're getting paid to pump you with. That way, we might have a chance of finding some "real" pertinent results from our Google searches, once again, before getting halfway through the 10th page of links! [I usually just start on about page 4, now, because the first 3 pages are usually pretty worthless commercially-oriented crap].

Best regards,

Bob

The foundation of success is probably a good knowledge of the basics of our craft. This allows us to quickly organize information - select only the important ones.

Dear Bob:

What an interesting story !! You've had the privilege of participating in the legendary ARPANET project. And you did it secretly !! This makes you --I suppose-- one of the first hackers in history :-O

Yes Napoleon.  Wise King Solomon also continued to say, 'of the making of books, there is no end, and study is wearisome...'.  But the end of the matter is to have the fear of God and do his commandments.  So even in the era of knowledge explosion, we will make time for spiritual commitments, love God and do his will in this life.  It's not easy to strike a balance, but then good things aren't always easy.

One of the solutions is to accept in principle that the information overload is so great that it is beyond the capacity of individuals to deal with it on their own. Instead they need to identify sources of reliable, condensed, quality content that serves their professional needs.

Networked content curation is increasingly being used by organisations within the health sector to deal with the information overload. A small group of individuals undertake content curation for a larger network. This prevents duplication and redundancy of effort by the members of the wider group. There are a number of curation tools that are now in use, the larger the organization the greater the likelihood that the curation tool will be more sophisticated in nature. One of the well known tools used by smaller organizations as well as individuals is the Scoopit platform-

http://www.scoop.it

This is a good relevant question for a problem which requires a working solution. Yes, there is an information explosion and libraries become more & more stacked with books and journals as time goes by. The real trouble is that these publications are not necessarily correct & accurate which result in perplexity  when they are consulted especially by young scholars. Add to it that in many occasions, one may seek an applicable important information but ends up with nothing (i.e. information famine).

In one of the universities of London, I saw a good solution which may be extended to other universities' libraries. Every "donated" book or journal that is "candidate" to enter the library is first given to an expert to have a glimpse on it. If it is worthy, then it goes in ; if not, it will  be placed in front of the library under a notice which says: Help Your Self !

I think that the world, as a whole, needs a huge "filtering process" to keep the good references & to get rid of inadequate "obsolete" references. This requires employment of old experienced capable intellectuals & this will not be costly. In fact, enormous advantages will ensue afterwards.    

It is really a big problem. Explosions are usually noisy and it is always difficult to find 'signals' from noise. Whenever , an original idea occurs, it is best to first test by your self, rather than search literature to find that such work has been done elsewhere or by anyone. If one does it, he is likely to lost in the 'information explosions'. After analyzing your work you may seek similar work Carrier out by others.  If no one has done then we'll and good. If someone has done ,then you have corroborated it. This course I find it convenient.

Information Explosion - What a term! 

I think to make sense in this age of information explosion one needs to filter out. First where - which website is credible  - to search for the information. Zeroing on the information that is required rather than gathering tons of it that stays at the back of the disk.

Colleagues who have sent me their answers:

Prof. Rajesh Kumar, from Ministry of Science and Technology (India):

"In the decade of Information Science and fast connectivity useful information surfing are quite difficult. But search engine are more powerful and helpful. You can refer my article on Information science available with profile."

Prof. Rozália Klára Bakó, from Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, (Miercurea-Ciuc, Romania):

"Information explosion also brings about professional information management tools - advanced searching and filtering mechanisms, and service providers as well. I subscribe to news alerts on areas of interest, and skim suggestions from professional associations I am part of... RG is also a muse :)"

Prof. Montserrat Hernández-López, Universidad de La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain):

"Dear Colleague:

A few years ago, I deal with the excessive amount of information about a topic, as some colleagues have said: classify and read/discard the good/bad. But now, I do not obsess me to control all the literature on a topic, but if I want to explore on a statistical theme (my specialty), turn to the most cited papers and then performed a literature search according to my goals.

Thank you for sending this question, José Eduardo. I hope you considere my answer.

Regards!

 Prof. José Walter Pedroza Carneiro, from Universidade Estadual de Maringá, (Paraná, Brazil):

"Dr. Eduardo,

In fact there are various aspects around scientific publications. Some of them are technical and others are economical. Developing experiments is easier than to make patents. However, the abstract is a filter useful to professionals around the world because is not cheap to pay US$ 35.00 to discover that the paper is out of the respective research context. The foremost information not available in the Abstract is the data analyses. Genereally, this issue was motive of discussion times ago, and currently I do not know how it has been seen by experts in the science literature. In poor countries is difficult for researchers and scholars up to date in data analyses. In Maringá, the number of papers in every volume in the Acta Scientiarum was reduced. Furthermore Science became a business. Otherwise a like to read information on different subjects of Science. I bought, times ago, a book about data analysis in Medical Research and I found it useful to agronomists. But, the difference in Science and Technology publication I found significant in the last years was the Researchgate platform where is the reader that made the choice about the information he want to read. The judge is the reader. This is Innovation in Science and Technology. I had years ago a paper declined by the magazine, but following the current technological information I discovered that my declined paper about growing media is the best in the production of bedding plants with strong roots and non-etiolated bedding plants. This paper is now available in Researchgate. I hope these words can help the beginners.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Walter

Dear All,

Many of us are complaining about the enormous quantity and diversity of information and publications. However, interestingly, many spend a lot of time answering and commenting unnecessary and avoidable RG threads. I think good concentration is a basic virtue for scientists.

Filtering is important, and perhaps the comment by Nizar may sometimes help: "Every 'donated' book or journal that is 'candidate' to enter the library is first given to an expert to have a glimpse on it."

 -  However, there is one huge concern I have with that: the tyranny of 'experts.' 

For example, decades ago, I found that the way hypothesis tests were (and often are) used was (is) generally quite misleading.  But I was lucky to even have the following letter published, about the time I stopped using them:

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262971440_Practical_Interpretation_of_Hypothesis_Tests_-_letter_to_the_editor_-_TAS

Questioning conventional wisdom is often an uphill climb.  Long before I wrote that letter, I used hypothesis tests, and even developed one.  They can sometimes be useful (but not solitary p-values). But many experts were not thinking in practical terms at all.  I remember one very alarming (alarming to me, anyway) presentation an expert gave, that i felt completely confused the meaningfulness of such tests, but a large audience seemed rapt with attention.  The very word "significance" is a horrible misrepresentation.  Effect size is far more important.  Today, many more experts have taken a much more critical view of hypothesis tests, and my view seems to no longer be so radical, but actually mainstream to a large extent. 

Many people may have papers blocked from journals because a competing school of thought prevails there.  A friend of mine was blocked in such a way from one journal, and then his paper was published in another (with higher impact factor, if that means anything).  I can think of another incident of apparent interference, and I suspect this is not uncommon.  I had one paper blocked where I was sent a comment that was categorically incorrect, and easily demonstrated. 

My point is that having someone filter what you can see might be helpful, but it might also filter out the very information you should see, and perpetuate misconceptions that should be challenged. So, even recommendations from experts may delay progress, and I certainly think that completely blocking access is a bad idea, when it can be avoided.

So, recommendations from a variety of experts might be helpful. But censorship is generally not constructive.  In the comment from Nizar, I can see that physical space could be a problem, and at least the materials were made available to those who wanted them.  However, we have to be careful that in an effort to raise the quality of what is available, we don't block access to too much.  -  There is an old (and bizarre) saying about "not throwing out the baby with the bath water."  

Article Practical Interpretation of Hypothesis Tests - letter to the...

I am in the same position as Bob Skiles (retired for many years, but still researching). I don't have quite as gloomy a view of the upcoming generation's attitudes, and a great deal of my work is done with much younger co-authors, who are quicker off the mark at retrieving stuff I had not heard of.

There are a few dodges to cope, though maybe I am lucky to work in a field without a HUGE flood of stuff appearing. One is that if you have a network of friends and colleagues around the world, between you there are different sources and filters used by each of us, and they can be shared. Researchgate certainly widens that network.

I long ago gave up the idea of trying to find everything that might be relevant. Way back in the stone age (1960s), when one got stuff (hard copy) on interlibrary loan, most of it was useless. Similarly, if I track a reference and find a paywall I cannot circumvent, tough on the reference ( to be fair, I have institutional access to quite a lot). Or maybe I have a friend who does have access.

Because my field has no obvious economic implications, and those in it are widely scattered, we are on the whole a friendly bunch. I am not saying there is no competition (if only for prestige/respect). We help each other with info.

Reflecting on what Napoleon says: there is indeed an explosion, but not all of it is "information" in the sense of being either useful or reliable. Thus "noise" should be interpreted in the IT sense, and the problem is to distinguish the noise to signal ratio.

Bunkers may be very defensive, but insulation from the unreliable and sometimes downright crooked may be a necessary survival strategy. Perhaps talking about a gas mask would be a better analogy. 

I don't know about others, but I get a bit suspicious about large, apparently comprehensive books in my field that list thousands of references: has the author really read all of these?

And thanks, Bob. I think we were lucky in the timing of our entering the research field. Even my older PhD supervisor claimed that the atmosphere for research reached its peak  in about the 1960s: more optimism less vetting and control, less neurosis about competition and career, a smaller body of work to get to grips with.

Very lucky timing, indeed, Robert!  

I agree with you that information explosion has made analysis of data very complicated . Even Random Controlled Trials can give contradictory views . Meta analysis & review articles try to analyze the data & give some sense of direction to evaluate the available data . Ultimately , it is time alone which would allow us to analyze the impact of a study , which could be evaluated by the citation index , as other researchers agree with the data & recommend its use . For young researchers , textbooks are a better guide as controversial data are not discussed & as the researcher gains experience , he can learn to evaluate data in journals .

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2016.

Best Regards.

Jean.

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes to All !!

Glance over the abstract or selections; read more fully the relevant appearing ones. File others in memory for later retrieval, which mostly never occurs!

Narayanan

Glance over the abstract or selections; read more fully the relevant appearing ones. File others in memory for later retrieval, which mostly never occurs!

Narayanan

Yes, FILTERING is the solution to the amount of information.

Dear José

I have come late to your interesting and important question, and confess I simply do not have time to review all the earlier answers.  So my apologies if my brief comments overlap issues previously raised.  For convenience, I will detail my own concerns in point form.

• In respect of which the following 2013 comment by “Nobel Prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs” is also very relevant:
•  “Today I wouldn't get an academic job,” he told The Guardian. “It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough.”  https://chroniclevitae.com/news/291-what-s-the-point-of-academic-publishing

4. As noted above, the need to publish can lead to the premature publication of substandard work.  It can also be a significant factor in cases of deception and fraud, all for the sake of tenure and maintaining a reputation.  For example, in 2014 a former University of Queensland professor and his colleague were charged with 16 fraud-related offences for  falsifying a breakthrough study on Parkinson's disease.  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-12/university-of-queensland-professor-on-fraud-charges/5964476

5. The demand for publication may also intensify the potential for Academic biases.  For example:

• Your work may be dismissed if you haven’t read certain works that the assessors hold in high regard.
• (For instance, in a paper on the assassination of Philip II of Macedon, I included a brief discussion on Philip’s sexuality.  In the paper I was looking solely for corroborative evidence for one particular account.  I wasn’t engaging in a debate on sexual practices in the ancient world.  Nonetheless, one assessor complained that I was at fault for missing the following “relevant literature” (my italics)

Ambivalence. Androgynity and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity

Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love Between Men

and Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture

• If your article draws on arguments outside the assessors own fields of expertise, then they are more than likely to dismiss it out of hand.  Again, from my own experience; “the conclusion is not convincing as it is based on anachronistic analogies to modern psycho-analytical theories.”  In simple terms, it is not acceptable to examine ancient accounts of an individual’s behavior for any patterns of behavior that might be consistent with any abnormal psychological pathology.

6. The proliferation of articles for publication appears to have also led to a proliferation of specialised academic journals.  This can result in problems of accessibility.

Article Book Review: Williams, Andrea M.L.: The Adventures of the Ho...

How do you deal with the Information Explosion –the avalanche of publications and data- in your area of study or work?

Think we can't stop the "information explosion" phenomenon whereby big data (larger volume, velocity, variety, veracity) is getting more prevalent.  Perhaps we can make use of some big data analytics / analytical tools which can do filtering, sanitizing & extracting the insight that we need from the big data.

Although I see no definition of "information" in the additional material under the question, and therefore I know from the start that we are parting from the premise that information need not be defined in order to answer the question, I must say that, more often than not, researchers should look for expert commentary that may be material or tangential to their project at hand, and, if possible, some data culled from previous experiments or projects. Information, still undefined here, is neither data nor comment, often lacks an explicit origin or author, and makes me think of myth-making and rumor. The so-called information explosion has become a mix of anything with everything and the fact that we have a lot of it has nothing to do with the quality or pertinence of that material we vaguely call "information". I am rather skeptical about this alleged information explosion. I suggest, Eduardo, not to take for granted that we all agree as to what information "is". Maybe it would be good to start by asking for a working definition so we can begin this probably important discussion on good ground.

Saludos, Lilliana

Dear Liliana:

Your observation is really relevant. We, of course, have taken for granted that the meaning of the word "information" in this context is what any scientist understands as "information". But you have reminded us that the meaning may be problematic.

I however would not risk closing the meaning a priori to establish a ground for discussion. In my view, "information" is negative entropy, anything that reduces uncertainty. I'd like to start with this extremely generic definition...

It is evident that every specialist needs a solid foundation in his field in order to be able to filter out redundant information. From this perspective it is evident that the fundamental knowledge may be more important than rote (without a deeper understanding) learned "specials". It is also good to choose appropriate sources of information. Although, sometimes you can to find a "good grain" in unexpected places.

Dear Jorge, I appreciate your point of view and my comment acknowledges the importance of the question. But most "information" does not reduce uncertainty. In fact, we are always uncertain of information because usually we cannot check sources or references. Therefore, I see not one but two sources of uncertainty here: that of the often uncertain origin of whatever is circulated as information, and the uncertainty as to the validity and/or usefulness of the pretended information with regard to its field of impact.

Besides, I have no idea of what "any scientist" understands by information. The "common man theory" is never a "law". My experience here in RG is that there is a lot more opinion given as information than anything else. This reminds me when a few months back the doctor who allegedly made experiments and allegedly proved that the influenza vaccine could be detrimental to a child's health, and published his "results" in The Lancet —a very prestigious medical journal in England— lied about his findings and fell from grace and will probably lose his license. You never know, actually, whether what important journals publish is "data", "information" or plain falsehood. This falsehood already had an impact on influenza vaccination policies in the United States and elsewhere. Who knows how many children died of influenza because they were not vaccinated because of these alleged findings "any scientists" would probably had considered trustworthy. 

Lilliana

It's called NOISE. Everything meaningful is being drowned out...the result is total stupidity in all fields of science, journalism, economics, media, ..., you name it. In fact, the opposite is the case: nothing has any meaning.

Yes, Farook, I totally agree with you. 

Lilliana

Yes Farook

If we don't know that we will start putting tomatoes, even rotten ones, in our research salads!

Narayanan

The significance of the same information to different people is different. Archimedes sees geometric shapes and draw conclusions. The artist draws a person in compliance with the principle of geometric shapes. Player cards absentmindedly drawing figures on the table. People of different professions have different perceptions of an avalanche of information. Universal formula processing information does not exist. The information processing shown individuality, talent, ability for performance.

At night I would return home, set out a lamp before me, and devote myself to reading and writing. Whenever sleep overcame me or I became conscious of weakening, I would turn aside to drink a cup of wine, so that my strength would return to me. Then I would return to reading. And whenever sleep seized me I would see those very problems in my dream; and many questions became clear to me in my sleep. I continued in this until all of the sciences were deeply rooted within me and I understood them as is humanly possible. Everything which I knew at the time is just as I know it now; I have not added anything to it to this day. Thus I mastered the logical, natural, and mathematical sciences, and I had now reached the science"

Avicenna Ibn Sina

An inspiring passage, dear Fikrat!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!

Lilliana

As a student of information science, I know that dealing with huge amounts of data is getting more significant every day. Companies, universities or other institutions have to face that dealing with Big Data can be challenging but almost inevitable these times. Therefore a well-conceived concept on how to deal with huge amounts of information - for example by sctructuring unstructured data - is a must.

Prof. Jerry Krase, City University of New York - Brooklyn College, Brooklyn (US):

"The explosion increases the reliance on 'references' from those i respect. there is however an enormous amount of redundancy which leads me to believe that proportionally, there is little or no increase in innovative thought."

Information has a social life, just like individuals. There are certain types of information that thrived around hype and buzz. This type of information spreads like a contagion. I have in the past been swept away by it but felt at the end like so many "wanna bes". Completely at the mercy of buzzwords and the "search engine bubble". I am trying now to consciously  parse information through a filter. That filter essentially removes all hype to see what remains if I take all the frills and thrills out of it. Something like a "last meme standing" criteria to try and assess the substantiality of the information, which some say is knowledge and ultimately wisdom in essence. Though I think that the greatest filter ever invented is the wetware between our ears, big data science, in a way, helps people to disengage information from its social roots so that they can unravel insights that may at times be counter-intuitive.

Wow, beautifully, yet clearly written, Shian.

Never thought about social life of information!

May be like radiation, we can say that Information, like Old Soldiers, never die; they just fade away.

Narayanan

Ironically, the vast increase in the amount of potentially useful information is caused, in part, by the culture that rewards hypotheses much more than accurate and usable data. So people rush to present ideas, or to attack other ideas. Often this kind of paper disappears from any reference within a few years, or even months. And the backing data, where there is any, is often hard to get hold of. Some efforts are being made to improve this.

 Of course, we need hypotheses, if only to guide us in deciding what data to collect or measure. But being obliged to publish lots, and to try to attract theoretical interest by making some brand new claim clutters up the scene. 

 I certainly filter, mainly by source, on the basis of experience. But it is not an exact skill, and I am sure I miss some things that would be useful. Equally, I get annoyed when the filters used by others miss out my (I would say this!) work, even when it is in respectable but not high-ranking journals

Dear all, apologize for lengthiness....but - as a consequence ?- 

everyone / every research team in the future should / must have the finances to employ a "data scientist",  eventually also a "data mining scientist" to be able to cope with the flood of info-big data.... this IMHO is similar to former employment of scientific photographers, scientific assistants for special tasks, or, graphic artist(s) by surgeons or anatomists to prepare drawings and sketches most professionally for publication and for presentations. But I guess - since data mining, publishing, managing, processing (and perhaps manipulating), as well as ... collecting, recording, saving, and for sure some points more  - is not only a huge economic value but also a huge business there will for sure emerge the necessary companies doing that for money and the clients paying that money and believing that the information / data they are given are reliable, true and hopefully not redundant...

I - for my person - have to admit that it is impossible to retrieve and manage big data (= more / less this means "relevant literature", "concepts", "opinions" in the own working field) as "one-man show". To stay at least informed and be able to access relevant data modern communcation systems are necessary / indispensable... but (for the individual) there will come the point where you will exceed the hard disk's storage capacity of even 4TB, you will need special software you can't afford privately, etc., etc. ... so I ought to quit storing and managing big data/information just for fun in my retirement (:-))....

For another short reading concerning issues in my former research and working environment (Medicine, Clinics) I would like to point the interested to a recent article: @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/02/16/how-big-data-is-transforming-medicine/#586bb9cd1cd4

Best wishes and regards, Wolfgang

I can see it coming, Wolfgang.  The data scientists and data miners will be the lab assistants and lab cadets of times past, only for all academic fields.  Except much of the work will probably be done by computer programs.  And it will all be very expensive, which puts a greater cost burden on pure academic research.

The problem is that no one could possibly be able to keep up.  I think the real issue is that 99.9% of the published work is just the same old thing only seen from a little bit different view and so weeding through that is a nightmare.

I wish there were some place that only posted new ideas and not reworks so you could go to the new ideas to see if there is really anything new out there.

George

I agree George about "the same old thing" problem.  AS I have argued previously, a lot of that comes from the need to continually have something in print.  But I do wonder if the peer review process for publication does not also make a strong contribution to the overall problem.

To often judgement seems to rest less on the ideas being expressed, and more on whether the contributor has read ## papers that the reviewer thinks should have been cited.  Whether those papers are actually relevant or not.

Which means authors feel obliged to make sure they cover and address, as far as possible, everything relevant that's been written on the subject before.  In the process, should we really be surprised that the new ideas get lost in the verbiage.

Perhaps it's time to develop a new model for academic publications, where new theories are put up for debate via short papers, and the case for and against is subsequently argued in a respectful fashion, through an expanded published correspondence section in the relevant journal and related publications.

Just an idea.

The other problem is the reluctance of publications and their peer reviewers to contemplate theories that draw on ideas outside their own academic fields of expertise.

ArXiv.org is the best venue for new, cutting edge papers. The traditional journals are "old hat".

I am a bit of a dissident here! One of the reasons why we have so many short papers in so many journals is this demand that everything should be producing or demolishing new ideas. Many papers I have used are not exceptionally original in terms of ideas, but they are full of nice, juicy facts that I can use. More examples or instances reinforce an idea, and material published without any clear hypothesis being tested is often of great value. 

A long time ago, Thomas Kuhn developed the idea of "normal" science, where most of us explore the implications of just a few paradigms, or ways of thinking. Most of us will not produce "cutting edge" stuff. We will fill in the gaps and explore the consequences.

My problem is that the vast quantities of new stuff that we can look at turns out to be about trying to say "look how clever I am" producing a supposedly new idea with very little hard evidence. The occasional, often ancient paper retrieved almost by accident from an obscure journal is often the one I want. It is surprising to see which papers are still cited 20-30 years later. Not all are theoretical blockbusters.

I see that in many places the number of publications of an author is seen as an indicator of his/her competence. But other circumstances, as the number of coauthors, the real contribution to the science and the truth, practical and clear usefulness, culture in which the article is accepted, etc. are important aspects which must be considered too.

Luisiana, I'm sure ArXiv.org works very well in what it does, but it is currently open to only a limited number of 'hard' science fields.  There is no place on the site for chemistry or geology, and biology is restricted to a limited range of 'quantitative' fields.  There's certainly no place for 'soft' academic fields such as psychology, history, literary studies. political science, etc.

And while I agree with much of what you say, Robert, I am concerned that the peer review system as it has evolved, may be stifling the voice of some 'cutting edge' research, because such research takes the reviewer outside of their own comfort zone into areas they do not feel comfortable to comment upon.

I also have great respect for the little gems to be found in older studies that some people may overlook.  But I am also aware of the pitfalls.  As I have discussed elsewhere, I have seen a number of instances where a pet theory in one paper has been first noted in some larger study, and the idea has later come to be treated as authoritative by later scholars who have not bothered to go back and critically examine the evidence behind the original theory.

Dear all! Information Explosion! Coveted vacation. Please forget. Information explosion destroys dreams.