What’s a Journal For? This debate has been raging ever since preprint servers had been launched way back to 1991! Certainly, throughout my current submission of a journal article, one of many questions requested was whether or not the article was already deposited in such a preprint server (in a constructive sense, and never one excluding additional submission progress). Since my earlier touch upon this theme was made greater than three years in the past, I believed I’d replace it.
I’d begin with the commentary that some suppose the idea of a journal actually includes three separate parts (as much as eight have been advised); the story or narrative being instructed, the information on which that story is predicated and the citations or bibliography which set the context of the story. The latter two parts have each developed their very own publishing fashions; the information in a repository and accompanied by wealthy metadata which offers at the very least among the context and citations which have their very own mannequin. Article metadata additionally contains its personal citations serving to to position the information right into a wider context or “greater image” as expressed by a data graph,[1] which even CAS Scifinder will now reveal based mostly in your particular search!‡. Such metadata can also be now usually a part of the general metadata related to journal articles. The information part is being accompanied by in depth work to reinforce the accompanying metadata fashions[2] and we’d count on speedy progress to be made right here within the close to future.
So once more to ask “what’s a journal for” if two of its important parts have their very own publishing fashions? The story will all the time have an essential position to play and peer assessment of that story† will all the time be an essential facet of the journal – certainly maybe a very powerful facet. So ought to we focus in our consideration on this? I famous that in 2017, a courageous new experiment claiming “Open entry • Publication cost free • Public peer assessment • Wikipedia-integrated” of which public peer assessment was an essential part, has collected comparatively few publications since. I additionally famous an article[3] wherein the reviewers (however not their opinions) are clearly indicated. This idea too has not made a lot headway. Will issues change sooner or later? Some suppose that they’ve too, or all the idea of scientific publishing will certainly fragment into many various fashions and now not totally serve its objective.
‡I can not resist together with my very own data graph right here, which reveals properly the impacts of among the work I’ve been related to, as represented by the followers on the skin of the central graph.
†Though a serious part of many peer opinions has the concentrate on the information and (lacking) citations.
