I don't know about others, but when I do a literature search, it's based on keywords, and I'm paying a lot more attention to the title and abstract than I am to the journal it's published in, at least in the first go-round. Usually, if the title and abstract sound interesting, I'll do a quick read-through, and only then pay attention to the source. If the source isn't obviously wonky (an unknown journal, or one with a reputation for predatory publishing, etc.), I look around for other work by the paper's authors, so I can see if they've got a track record on the subject, and I look for citations to the paper. This works pretty well for me.

Your questions about how to make science more "democratic and based on reason" seems to be something else entirely. There's far too much that's going unstated in the second paragraph of your question, and it's too broad. I think that in the U.S., the status of science has been diminishing, especially since the circles of unreason (and by this, I mean right wing politicians and their followers, who are steeped in anti-intellectualism, and who can't tell the difference between expertise and "bias") wield unreasonable power, and are doing their best to drive us back into some weird fundamentalist Dark Age. Maybe 30 years ago (definitely pre-Reagan) we could talk about idolizing and elevating science beyond the status it deserved, but not anymore. Today, scientists struggle to make a largely science-illiterate public understand the most basic things about what we are doing. Not that the social sciences or humanities are doing much better -- the tide of Willful Ignorance rose over them first. But science was not a victor in that struggle. It's just the latest loser.

If you want answers to the stack of questions in your second paragraph, I suggest you sort them out and ask each one separately, with some details about the kinds of answers you want.

I don't know about others, but when I do a literature search, it's based on keywords, and I'm paying a lot more attention to the title and abstract than I am to the journal it's published in, at least in the first go-round. Usually, if the title and abstract sound interesting, I'll do a quick read-through, and only then pay attention to the source. If the source isn't obviously wonky (an unknown journal, or one with a reputation for predatory publishing, etc.), I look around for other work by the paper's authors, so I can see if they've got a track record on the subject, and I look for citations to the paper. This works pretty well for me.

Your questions about how to make science more "democratic and based on reason" seems to be something else entirely. There's far too much that's going unstated in the second paragraph of your question, and it's too broad. I think that in the U.S., the status of science has been diminishing, especially since the circles of unreason (and by this, I mean right wing politicians and their followers, who are steeped in anti-intellectualism, and who can't tell the difference between expertise and "bias") wield unreasonable power, and are doing their best to drive us back into some weird fundamentalist Dark Age. Maybe 30 years ago (definitely pre-Reagan) we could talk about idolizing and elevating science beyond the status it deserved, but not anymore. Today, scientists struggle to make a largely science-illiterate public understand the most basic things about what we are doing. Not that the social sciences or humanities are doing much better -- the tide of Willful Ignorance rose over them first. But science was not a victor in that struggle. It's just the latest loser.

If you want answers to the stack of questions in your second paragraph, I suggest you sort them out and ask each one separately, with some details about the kinds of answers you want.

When reading articles I'm most influenced by the strength of the argument and the validity/reliability of the data (be it qualitative, quantitative or mixed method). I'm not overly swayed by who the author is or what journal they have been published in.

Kontent is King!

Interesting your view Kali. We probably agree that for the general public, the intellectual status of science decreases proportionally with the influence of the social and political factors in the evaluation of a scientific publication. We might have responsibility in the current status of science because the public is aware of these factors, soon or later.

Yes, Tony, like you, the majority of researchers are most influenced by the strength of the argument and the validity/reliability of the data...However, some cases should make us think: for instance, Grigory Perelman has a different view of the peer-reviewed journal process (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv). Are repositories of electronic preprints, like arXiv, a solution to make science more democratic?

NORMALLY SCIENTISTS GO foe THE JOURNAL IN THEIR LINE, WITH Novelty.

Good refereed journals are always good. But the judge team also be experts .

The scientific and literary quality of an article are the most important factors. The academic and editorial quality of a journal is of secondary importance, but it does matter to me. I don't care at all about quantitative rankings like "impact factor," which are largely irrelevant in the social and human sciences.

I have found an astonishing result. I would ilk to share its general traits with you guys. After some empirical research I carried out (with the help of some of my students), I found that in general in the history of science (I take into consideration examples from physics, math, philosophy and other major fields), those paper that have represented a real novelty and progress in human knowledge have almost NEVER been published in A1 journals, but rather (and surprisingly) in B and even C journals.

One concrete example: E. Lorenz paper that gave rise to the science of chaos was never published in a top journal (we would say today ISI-first quartile).

I am in process of gathering the date collected and will publish it as a paper, precisely.

That is not surprising to me, Carlos. Often the academic gatekeepers are defenders of the status quo, and new material that challenges the old order tends to be supressed, especially if it comes from outside of the leading group within a discipline.

It would be interesting to consider other variables, like age, gender, language, and nationality, and see what trends emerge from the data.

Very interesting your research Carlos. The issue is also if important scientific efforts can at least have an opportunity to be published..how many years of dedication can be lost if there is not a way to publish your research (either by lack of social influence or for presenting a new paradigm)?

If new ideas, observacions or experiments are not published for lack of social influence of the author, the knowledge that results is incomplete and biased and not completely scientific...

This is a superb question and one that wants repeating until publish or perish culture and its artificial, arbitrary impact factor world have been thoroughly discredited as a means of evaluating quality science. Novelty and innovation are being stifled by both publish or perish and the striving for 'impact' as both depend more on toeing the line than breaking new ground. While comparing the 'value' of scientific research is inevitable in many cases it should never be the 'gold standard'. Much of our advancement in science and social development for that matter has come from ideas that were originally rejected.

Perhaps an additional element to consider in the value of scientific documents is the extent to which they relate to a particular time. In environmental science, and particular in my field of forest conservation, we're considering processes and relationships set against a background of accelerating environmental change - climate, weather extremes, novel pests and pathogens. Thus, a scientific paper from before 2010 might well have assumptions (including unwritten ones) that no longer apply in 2014. I have a mental image of our scientific knowledge as one of those Antarctic ice shelves - still adding new snow and ice on top, but melting and eroding from underneath. Perhaps our scientific documents should have a 'Use by' or 'Best Before' date attached?

That's a good remark, Juan. Our contemporary history of science shows several examples in that direction. Just to mention one, a very prestigious and original paper by Brian Arthur took nearly 20 years to be accepted and published in a prestigious journal. (Well, more or less). And when his paper got published, the impact was low, for in the meantime several other papers were published along the same track that had a far deeper impact on the subject ( = complexity and economics). (I can bring out other examples in various fields).

The point is that the dynamics of knowledge - thanks to the internet (open journal access, networking, marvelous data base in our universities, etc. -, is so fast and tight that if you are not able to get your paper or book published soon (of course, provided that you're working on spearhead research) others, for sure, will take the lead.

The social influence of the author does play an important role, for sure. And yet, not everything can be reduced to it. I believe that the double-blind evaluation is improving. But we all must accept that it is far from being perfect.

Here I want to come to a point mentioned by David: nationality does play an important role. I would like to say: language-biased-nationality...

I recently helped launch the on-line Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health, and wrote an inaugural editorial which may be relevant to the challenging question posed for this forum.[1]

In that editorial I noted that, “as a new journal we respond to this challenge by addressing the principle that medical and public health practices must be appropriate to the settings where they are applied. Most established journals sustain their reputations for scientific rigour by serving known investigators in developed countries. New entries, such as ours, open up participation so that, while also committing to quality and peer review, research more sensitive to varying social, cultural and economic conditions around the world has a fairer chance of being published.”

Furthermore “the health science literature has been mostly driven by the priorities of developed countries: the evidence base is dominated by this historical bias. A decade ago, the Global Forum for Health Research observed that only 10% of worldwide expenditure on health research and development is devoted to the problems that primarily affect the poorest 90% of the world's population.[2] This is changing: the quantity and quality of research from emerging economies is expanding, while knowledge synthesis is becoming steadily more collaborative and global in scope. Another principle is emerging: lessons from developing countries are of value to developed ones e.g., global disease surveillance, large scale field trials of vaccines and micronutrients, community-based participatory research, and the evaluation of traditional health practices. Recent decades have also witnessed a big push to promote ‘best practices’, mostly driven by the science base of developed countries. Related to this, legitimate questions arise about the kind of evidence needed to determine the relevance of their adoption in other settings. When such questions arise in western countries, they are put to the test through replication research to determine their applicability. By contrast, western best practices are typically adopted in developing countries uncritically, often as an extension of western training, even though conditions may be very different, and locally developed approaches desirable…

However, lack of replication in applying developed country norms to development settings renders type 2 errors almost routine: implicitly declaring that no difference exists, whereas in fact it does.[3] The difference in making these errors across the ‘development divide’, is largely due to deficient research capacity in development settings, and the ongoing need to rectify this.”[4]

To generalize from this reasoning, new journals must start from somewhere, and it will take time for them to achieve a measurable impact score; in this respect, some will succeed, others may not. However, if they are addressing issues that are relevant to their particular settings, they represent a needed investment in health research infrastructure.[4] If they help researchers evolve their roles to shape our future, they will meet an important need and achieve their purpose.

References:

1. White F. Launching the Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health (inaugural editorial). GJMEDPH 2012; 1, 1: 1-2.

2. Global Forum on Health Research. The 10/90 report on health research 1999. World Health Organization. Geneva. 1999.

3. Porta M. Editor. Dictionary of Epidemiology. 5th edition. International Epidemiological Association. Oxford University Press. 2008. New York.

4. White F. Capacity building for health research in developing countries: a manager’s approach. Pan American Journal of Public Health 2002; 12: 165-71.

Very important all these comments!

Science should be "a really democratic endeavor that should extend beyond institutional activity" and the prestige of it.

As we discussed with my PhD advisor in my dissertation, we should stimulate independent work to make science less vulnerable to hierarchies, more democratic and less dependent on fancy equipments.

Therefore, an important step is implement mechanisms that valorate scientific documents from independent researchers.

Sometimes evaluation of an article is quite different among peer revwers and editors. Authors pay a great effort and times in writing an article, however sometimes peers and editors select papers without careful reading. Sometimes big controversies are found among them. Judging or evaluation are not easy and need a grate deal of responsibilities. May be only God can do it.