As all scientists know in one way or another, publishing in a traditional journal which follows the peer-review method is at least a suffering, painful and time wasting process.
Lets list some known issues, just for the discussion to begin:
Now go to the not so far past and think:
Do you remember what followed?
A rather insignificant company named "Google" begun a rather provoked web site named "YouTube" where everyone could upload his/her music video.
That was!
Music industry in its former status just gone away!
Lets come to ResearchGate (RG) now:
So, given that visibility increases citations and that adds to the status of a researcher, what do you think:
- Will ResearchGate replace Journals just like YouTube replaced Music Companies?
Dear Fazlech,
It is a matter of time to be proven that traditional journals cannot guarantee the correctness of an article content.
I had read somewhere for an R package that reads a pdf, extracts statistical tables, examines them and shows the wrong ones!
Machine learning will massively destroy the myth of quality control...
I really hope it does replace traditional journals.
Editorial bias, selection bias, language bias, cultural bias, conflict of interest, especially relating to large Pharma interference in research and inability to identify research fraud comprehensively all cast a shadow on traditional journals. It is an imperfect world.
But the question of regulation will still remain. There has to be some degree of quality control and all the research deviants will still need to be identified and dealt with.
Lovely question, because we need to continually look for ways of improving research methodology and presentation, as technology improves.
The research world is long overdue for a make-over
Thank you
I don't thonk so. RG doesn't provide any objective evaluation of our purely scientific efforts, but looks at overal activity, including q&a that are not scientific at all.
Surely, RG and Academia along with other online resources, will replace the traditional journals corporate reign.
Dear Fazlech,
It is a matter of time to be proven that traditional journals cannot guarantee the correctness of an article content.
I had read somewhere for an R package that reads a pdf, extracts statistical tables, examines them and shows the wrong ones!
Machine learning will massively destroy the myth of quality control...
About YouTube and music industry:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-youtubes-war-with-the-music-industry-251376/
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081915/role-youtube-music-industry.asp
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/05/23/youtube-music-threat-artist-livelihood/
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/10/17/1539753910000/Money-for-nothing--copyright-law--YouTube--and-the-future-of-music--Part-I-/
https://www.grammy.com/grammys/news/youtube-downloading-sites-biggest-music-industry-threat
Although reseearchgate has opened up new vistas in scholarly research development and scientific communication, traditional journals will continue to enjoy the important role they play in the dissemination of academic knowledge.
RG helps you to distribute your work more broadly whereas journal has somebody commit their time to qualify your paper as I think
Internet is already full of mumbling and fake news. Do you think this situation will be corrected sooner or later? In my opinion it is doubtful. Wikipedia certainly is not the leading edge of scientific research but at least we can trust it. In fact, the situation on web is like a mirror image of what we can see in the market of printed journals, books, newspapers, etc. Respectable journals will survive, and will remain respectable - even if published on-line only. We simply need the trusted sources of information, don't we?
Legal problems - that's another story.
I agree with your analysis on the publication process in traditional journals. I would add other known problems with the journal peer review exercise, such as incompetent reviews or ethical issues:
- request to include unnecessary references to publication,
- delay of publishing an article until another article on the same topic is published,
- breach of confidentiality, and
- using ideas, data, or methods without permission; for details see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2642979/.
All things considered, I think discarding the peer review filter altogether could bring dissolution of scientific methods and social prestige of science to a greater extent than facilitating scientific progress. Open platforms as ResearchGate have a proven efficacy in highlighting the flaws in the official publication system and already impact it with great success as both complementary and a check-and-balance vector no one can ignore any longer.
@ Marek Wojciech Gutowski
Can you believe a paper in a journal? information can be trusted? S many counterfeits. Published papers online can't be used for reaching, no incentive to fake, but may be more credible.
@ Marek Wojciech Gutowski
We look at the literature, it's not information that needs to be trusted, it's information that brings inspiration.
Dear Marek,
Yes, respectable journals will continue to exist, but will they have the same status as today? I am afraid no. (for them)
Dear Sonia,
The answer to problems of quality in publishing without peer-review is simple:
- Reproducible Research
I think RG can help on it, since you can upload everything: data, codes, graphics...
Traditional journals are like a black box...
@ Duan Xian Xiang
Yes, we are reading new publications for the inspiration of our own research - among other purposes. But it is certainly better when the inspiration comes from reliable source. I really don't know what to think about article with grammatical errors in its title, especially when encountered in well known journal. Is such an article credible?
On the other hand, 'breaking news' on the web, usually written by journalists, not the original authors, need independent confirmation. Otherwise they become a well known 'truth' being in reality only the product of someone's (sick) imagination. Sometimes we see crazy ideas promoted at RG. They are crazy since their authors simply lack solid background, yet they are proliferated again and again. This (almost) doesn't happen in traditional journals.
The scheme of the publications in indexed in the in the Web of Science journals, as main source of knowing the best research works in the different areas, and as a measure to distinguish the value of the researchers work, clearly reflective the level of the authors that have sources of financing their work. However, reaserchers (bassically from developing countries) that don't have possibilities to finance publications in first level journals, to attend Events with first level publications, etc. are in a great disadvantage. The worst thing is that reserchers community could ignore the existence of vanguard works simply by the reason people doesn't find out. For that reason I consider that researchgate and other Web Sites devoted to diffuse the researchers, from all the world, work could help to fill that hole.
Neverless, I also think that respectable journals must and will survive, coexisting and complemented by Researchagate and similar Web Sites.
I think the same problem exist in YouTube:
- you can watch almost awful videos under any kind of aeshetics
- but you can find also diamonds there
Good work will shine...
RG may be replacing social media as it connects the researchers in an "open-environment" or "freedom of speech". However, RG never, replace the worthy research journals.
Thank you for this question
It opens up the discussion about bias in the peer-review journal system that we all face.
Someone needs to come up with an internet based solution, like Google and Youtube did- as you have said.
ResearchGate is a good start.
It is up to us to do some of the self and joint regulation of what appears out here. I like the openness of challenging ideas [ without the personal attacks]. we learn together.
@Demetris Christopoulos
The reproducibility requirement has long been recognized by the scientific community and is consistently promoted as a criterion of acceptability for publication. I'm sure you will discover sooner or later that there is no legal way to bypass human weaknesses. YouTube has not brought any progress in music quality.
No lo creo, porque la exigencias del editor y el trabajo de los pares otorga rigor científico excelencia y alta credibilidad
No creo que esta web u otras similares sustituyan a las publicaciones en revistas de alto impacto, ya que coincido con los que piensan que los sistemas de revisión y selección de los artículos de estas últimas aseguran rigor y científicidad.
Sin embargo, lo anterior no contradice el hecho de que muchas veces se publican teorías o posiciones ya "establecidas", mientras que los nuevos campos de la ciencia y las nuevas hipótesis tienen una visibilidad menor en esas publicaciones y sitios como ResearchGate permiten su difución y discusión, por lo que estimo que ambas variantes, lejos de ser antagónicas, se cojmplementan perfectamente.
A very good visualization for Music Industry sales can be found here:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/
You will observe that physical format tends to disappear after 2000, the launch year of Napster
That there is a great chance of this happening. Simply, people want to see the effects right away!
Thank you for the question, it is very interesting. My short answer is that RG should not and probably will not replace traditional journals. However, I do think it is already enhancing traditional journals.
My long answer is centered around the 4 good points you made that I included below. I agree it is difficult to publish against mainstream ideas. It has always been difficult to present against the current standard as in cholera or fossils in the 18th and 19th centuries, even when the current standard was dead wrong. However, I believe this is a virtue of science, not a sin. Science puts the current understanding of a fact in place, then all challengers are free to try to knock it down. The problem you are referring to is that not all journals allow all challengers to challenge. This should be solved by multiple competing journals in a field, and I look at RG as one of those journals. From this perspective I don’t think RG should or even will replace current journals, but it will enhance them, make them more scientifically competitive, and help keep them open to new ideas.
However, the converse is also true. RG allows anyone to present anything. And yes, new material can be challenged in RG. But the standard and expertise of both the challenge and/or the material can be dubious. The rigor afforded by an established journal is useful to check this potential drawback to an open challenge review system. Taken together, platforms like RG and traditional should improve the quality of material presented in the scientific community. These two platforms should help to make machine written papers or dubious correlation-causation arguments for example better vetted in the community.
2.There exists a silent prohibition for publishing against mainstream dogma (try to publish against relativity theories)
3.Editors of high impact factor journals often use their authority in order to prevent publishing theories that are opposed to their personal ones 1.RG offers to everyone the opportunity to upload his/her scientific work immediately without any kind of screening
5.RG gives you the opportunity for your work to be judged under an open, transparent and fair way: you always know who writes against you (not like the "unknown reviewers")
RELX PLC (RELX - Elsevier) share price in NYSE seems to decrease last years, see plot.
Data from:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RELX/history?period1=781480800&period2=1544047200&interval=1mo&filter=history&frequency=1mo
@Demetris
Not being an economist I can only suspect the reason(s) of Elsevier's notations going down. In physics, the quality of their journals dropped noticeably in the last 2-3 years. They clearly no longer care with editorial work, thus we can spot grammatical errors (!) even in the headlines. My another observation is that their referees seem sometimes nonexistent. Sad.
Dear Marek,
Yes, but Elsevier is the leading company, so it mirrors the entire industrial condition.
I spotted the trend, but it is an early observation...
I am not sure RG will replace traditional journals but maybe platforms like RG help show some of the deficiencies in Journals in selection of material, especially regarding the inclusion of novel ideas. We also have to remember that RG does only give points for conference papers or preprints. So in a way, their stance is supporting journal publication.
Warm regards Tina
There exists a whole family of "tubes web pages" that promotes self-doing this or that and so on.
It is not only music, it is a general new age and RG could be named YouPublish or something similar without loss of its main task.
The rule is as next:
- when a "tube" application comes in, then the relevant commercial sector feels a shock
- after some years a process of substitution takes place
- finally a kind of equilibrium between old and new players is being achieved
Lets wait to see how publishing industry will react...
If content can be freely uploaded, deleted and changed, there is no longer a stable historical literature. Any article can be modified in name, content and authorship as the creators please, which also opens for plagiarism. Referencing or trusting literature published in such media is not possible. The journals serve the purpose of establishing a historical unalterable record.
Yes, but for such a task we have arxiv.org, SSRN and other repositories.
The true power of RG is the "YouPublish" approach.
(Of course if you publish trash, then blame is all against you...)
Seems like the writing is on the wall. Eventually we will end up just being heads on a platter with virtual reality glasses attached. We will stop using our bodies all together and if you don't use it you lose it. Interesting question. Kidding aside, I like the advent of all of the plagiarism software. But, we seem to be losing validity in our research. So many studies with associative designs and less correlation studies. It's all good at the same time. I also like the NVivo software for qualitative statistics. Plus, avenues such as RG increase our levels of education and cultural diversity. Good Stuff!
Dr. Field
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