Dear Aaron, thank you very much for the important contribution.

There is also the issue of conformation bias from publishers. A publisher usually publish the works with positive results over those with negative or no impact.

Dear Terence, thank you very much for the important contribution.

Time! I just don't have time to publish every paper I potentially could. Especially if they would end up in a lower impact factor journal or only tell part of the story. Its horrible and I wish I had the time, but we often have to leave good work unpublished!

Dear Travis, thank you very much for the important contribution.

For me, it's definitely lack of time. I have a lot of data I could publish on but I'm so busy doing projects, meetings and so on, that I just don't always get the time. I especially find this if the data is problematic in some way and I have to do more with it before it is really usable. I also agree with Aaron that cost is a factor too.

Dear Helen, thank you very much for the important contribution.

In my own view, this is a contradiction or else an oxymoron, for by definition) a research that is not published is not a research. Of course, writings such as "manuscripts" are always important. However, they will always remain manuscripts as long as they are not published.

Such is, it seems, the fate of science and philosophy in our days. Thinking and doing research are to be expressed -i.e., transformed- into written and published texts.

I do recognized the importance of, say, oral presentations, oral conferences and the like. The great point from our times is that still those oral presentations can be registered and thus acquire a different value (via coursera, youtube, academia, etc.).

Dear Carlos, thank you very much for the important contribution.

This is interesting question, why lot of research is unpublished. There could be many reasons:

a) in many countries, English is not the language of communication. For example, in many Asian countries, the mother tongue is NOT English. Scientists/researcher may be comfortable in his/her language but may not be in English. However, for publication , English is the primary language.

b) At times, it is sheer laziness on the part of researcher.

c) At time, especially in management domain, the factors are culture and context specific which may not find acceptance in say western world, where publications originate.

d) At times, the cost of publication may be quite significant .

Fortunately, thanks to open journals, researchers are now finding a viable outlet where their work can get published.!

There are many reasons why much researches go unpublished. Work pressure, time, and cost of publication are significant reasons in this connection.

The main reasons are 1) scientific writing is the most difficult task of reasearch. As a proof you can still do experiments after having a party last might; but you cannot write as this needs intense mental concentration. Thus too many scientists do not take the time to identity novel results then write. Also, scientific writing is not lectured at universities. 2) Not all results are publishable because they do not show an advance versus existing knowledge. Advices to publish faster are given in the book Scientific Writing for Impact Factor Journals

1) Poor scientific writing skills

2) Do not have budget for a publication. Many good journals ask for more than thousands USD.

3) No motivation from superior/colleagues at the workplace

Dear Kamal, S G Deshmukh, Mahfuz, Éric and Shaidah, thank you very much for the important contributions !!

Time - definitely can't publish everything that I'd like to. Having the 'right' people to work with, work life balance, some things aren't 'cool'. You forget you've got something that you wrote. Hahaha and the list goes on.

As a matter of fact, unpublished manuscripts do play an important role in the communication of scientists under one circumstance, namely that usually the knowledge and discussion of those unpublished manuscripts is taken into account usually once the author has disappeared. Thus, the communication is not so much intra-generational as inter-generational - communication.

Dear Alan and Carlos, thank you very much for the important contributions !!

Interesting discussion, thank you all. In addition to what has been already said, I think lack of motivation (from researcher and work environment) and proper time management is very important. Many researchers give more importance and value to the other commitments. Quite honestly, I do not that cost is a real issue here as most of respected journals are free.

In my perspective, it has to do with

1. the interest of the researcher

2. The motivation of the researcher

3. The relevance of the research

Many reasons but to name but a few. Peer reviewer bias, the cost of publishing, fear of plagiarism, sector dominance in certain publications, scientific tends and fashions on one side. On the other side poor quality writing, 'me too' research, research supervisor misdirection, ghost writing, scientific dogma and lack of confidence in the system.

No one will publish negative data. It is valuable though and a collaborative effort to prevent un-necessary repeats of experiments could lead to labs being much more productive.

Here good papers:

Chan, A., Song, F., Vickers, A., Jefferson, T., Dickersin, K., Gotzsche, P., Krumholz, H. M., Ghersi, D., & van der Worp, H. B. (2014). Increasing value and reducing waste: addressing inaccessible research Lancet (8 Jan ) : 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62296-5

Macleod, M. R., Michie, S., Roberts, I., Dirnagl, U., Chalmers, I., Ioannidis, J. P. A., . . . Glasziou, P. (2014). Biomedical research: increasing value, reducing waste. Lancet, 383(9912), 101-104.