Is writing a paper a good way to introduce an idea or concept to be considered by the greater public, industry, etc?
I am wondering if sharing an idea through an academic journal may be good way to introduce an idea so that it may be adopted/critiqued/considered by communities and industry actors. The specific idea that I have in mind is a concept to promote ethical consumption and production.
How should a concept or idea paper be positioned?
Any good examples of academic papers that have called for the implementation of an idea or concept?
Thank you!
Paul: No, this is not the best way to introduce a new idea or new concept. The best method is to present the idea at a conference, seminar, or meeting of people in that field. Ask for feedback. Listen carefully to the feedback and comments you receive.
Paul: No, this is not the best way to introduce a new idea or new concept. The best method is to present the idea at a conference, seminar, or meeting of people in that field. Ask for feedback. Listen carefully to the feedback and comments you receive.
Hi Haaris Saqib
I would also suggest you to present the idea at a conference where you can find the right audience. This will help you in two ways:
1. You will get the quality feedback on your idea
2. you will be able to connect with thought leaders in your area
Please remember, find the right conference with right audience is the key
Wishing you luck for the same
In a scientific journal paper, you are normally focussing on the explanation of the results and findings of research work which has already been done. Thus, it is not a good way to present an idea or concept without having the results and outcome already at hand as the reviewers of the journal would normally reject the paper.
I agree with Paul and Nitin that it is a good approach to get proper feedback on an idea or concept by presenting those at a conference via a conference paper and a conference presentation. But, often also the reviewers of conferences reject papers on ideas and concepts without first results being presented as well. So, I think the best way is to present ideas and concepts first in peer groups to gather first feedback.
The general scientific approach might be:
1. Observe an gap in knowledge, define it cleary and figure out first ideas to address this gap
2. Write something down while further developing your ideas and bringing your ideas in an ordered structure
3. Discuss those ideas with suitable peer groups and gather first feedback to enlarge your own understanding
4. Do some research work
5. Present adjusted idea/concept together with first results at suitable conference; both to gather expert feedback and to claim to be the first with this (hopefully) new idea/concept
6. Do more research work and present solution approach and results as often as possible to different groups to gather various feedback
7. Do even more research work to get (almost) final results
8. Sit down and write a paper for submission in a suitable journal to your research presenting approach and results and by the way finalising your research work
Hope this helps, feedback on my approach is very much appreciated.
A good example of a seminal paper that has changed the way of thinking of many researcers an has been implemented in many areas is "the semantic web" in Scientific American by TIM BERNERS-LEE, JAMES HENDLER and ORA LASSILA.
paper URL: https://www-sop.inria.fr/acacia/fabien/lecture/licence_travaux_etude2002/TheSemanticWeb/
In my opinion, researchers have to increase the visibility of their work as much as they can. A mean could be open access journals.
With regard to full texts requests researchers receive continuously, it is obvious that subscription fees are obstacles to access to research content and hence to spread out the ideas and the concepts they contain.
Leila Zemmouchi-Ghomari can you explain more the context that this paper came out of? I’m not familiar with it. Thanks!
Tim Berners Lee is the inventor of the web (in the ninetees) he proposed the architecture of the current web, connected documents via hyperlinks, this is called now the traditional web.
Research engines such as google need to extract data from web pages to answer web users requests with more precision and relevance. This need among others made Berners Lee and his collaborators to propose a set of standards (recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium, such as RDF: data model, SPARQL: interrogation language) and publication guidelines to enable automatic extraction of data from web pages. So the semantics of web pages are explicitely and formally defined and can be interpreted by machines, this is the semantic web: web enhanced with meaning. Meaning understood by machines.
Google, for example, exploits the data embedded in web page and organize these data in the Google knowledge graph as facebook uses the open graph protocol (to recommend relevant content to its users), and many success stories are available.
Okay, so if I am understanding correctly, the semantic web concept was first introduced via this paper? And it wasn’t a research paper, per say, but more of a paper describing the new potential.
Thanks Leila Zemmouchi-Ghomari for sharing the example!
And thanks all for the input!
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