OK now time for some real blogging (I.e. rant).
Things I hate about journal publications.
1) Supplementary Data. You see a neat paper, you downloaded of the website and then as you go through the text you bump into "see supplementary data". Now I don't really mind this, however I hate that journals do not append the data to the end of the pdf file. Now I understand not everyone wants the hard copy of 2345 two hybrid reactions, but for most cases the 2 or 3 supplemental figures are crucial. It drives me mad. I get a paper emailed to me and half the data is missing! What is worse is if the supplemental data is available on a different url. This would drive me crazy, but fortunately on this point, journals are getting better. Even worse than reading or finding supplemental figures, is writing articles that have supplemental figures. No one reads them, no one cites them, no one cares. It all amounts to good data thrown down the drain. And what happens if the internet dies, all that data will be lost for ever. So why publish supplemental figures? - well there is no space left in journals - they all want to be tight and short like Science and Nature articles, which brings me to point number 2 ...
2) Reading Science or Nature Publications. Now I realize that reading longwinded whiney articles that contain 13 figures and 25 pages of text is painful (and a thing of the past, see point 1), but what is worse is reading a 2 page Science/Nature article. Hardly any intro, supper condensed text and tons of supplementary data. What is even worse than reading one of these things is writing one. And now all journals want some Science/Nature/Sexy-science supper fast/supper condensed section. Since these papers are not published in Nature/Science they don't have that much to say anyways, thus making them much more readable than the real thing, but journals now want to shove as much as they can in the supplementary materials (see point 1).
3) Reading Protocols. There is nothing worse than trying to piece together how someone performed an experiment. "Procedure X was performed as previously (A)". Then you upload A only to find "Procedure X was performed as previously (B)". Eventually you come to the holy grail, the original paper, however the procedure is nowhere to be found. What's worse than procedures is to track down how a DNA construct was assembled (I once spent a day piecing together how a plasmid was modified over the course of 4 papers). The worst part is that the materials and methods section is getting less and less respect over the years. First journals moved this section to the end of the paper, then some stuck it exclusively online (see point 1) eventually they'll just be a note saying "good luck".
4) Cover art. Most journals have decent covers, but more and more the cover art is getting funky. Instead of a cool micrograph, some journals ... such as Cell ... are producing editions with pop-art covers. Now instead of crawling cells we have hamburgers, instead of 3D crystal structures we have a swimming pool. Does this really help Cell sell? (or is it sell Cell?)
OK it's breakfast time so I'll leave it there. And remember this is just some rant ...
- Log in to post comments
My largest issue with journals is that the outcome of publically funded science is published in privately held, for profit companies. So many times I have found a paper I need only to have to jump through hoops to get access. Tax payers are indirectly subsidizing journals and it drives me crazy.
EN,
Yes that was going to be number 5. But I just didn't have the energy to write about it (I'll have to write a part 2). And what makes it worse is that attempts to break the hold of these journals on publishing public financed science, such as the PLoS journal initiative, haven't worked.
Also I wanted to write about the "Boy's Club" effect. High end journals are packed with mediocre papers from big labs. I hate that.
I have those access problems, and I'm working through a univesity library system. My employer pays good money for access to journals, but at least 1/3 of the time, the article is on online. Another 1/3 of the time, the journal makes you re-do the search, rather than accepting the link, and then present me with a g*****mn html page, rather than the pdf directly.
I bitch as much as anyone (and with good reason) about the failings of journals and peer-review, including the problems with being online. But it is still way better now than the old pre-internet, hard-copy only system. My ability to search for info is now much easier and more efficient and effective.
I do detest the privately owned peer-review journals charging me to buy the results of publicly funded research back off the private journal. It seriously limits the access that researchers (and the general public) should otherwise have to peer-reviewed literature. At the very least, all publicly funded research should be freely available 6-12 months after formal publication.
On supplemental data: I agree entirely. If a datasetcan be placed in a standard repository, like BioGRID or PDB or NCBI, there's simply no point to the exercise. Pretty much the only excuse for supplemental data is when you have a dataset too large to fit into a standard manuscript AND which cannot be formatted for submission to one of the major repositories (time-lapse movies are one good example).
But this trend of putting controls in supplemental data is mind-bendingly stupid. A control is either important enough to include in the paper or it is not. Another thing that I find infuriating is that methods, first pushed to the back of papers, and printed in smaller type, are now being relegated to "Supplemental" Data sections. Look, folks, why don't we just delete the Results and jump straight to the Conclusions? Without a detailed description of experimental methods, i.e., how the experimetns were *performed*, the "Results" are devoid of scientific meaning.
This is a serious issue, and our community really needs to establish some sensible abd broadly applicable guidelines. [End rant.]
If the function that the journals are really providing is peer review, maybe we need to reduce the journal to a kind of certifying organization that just does peer review. Then just publish the whole thing in a place like arXiv, but limited to stuff that passed. Presto, page-count worries are a thing of the past! Just stick everything in there!
(I'm sure this has been suggested a million times before, and probably attempted more than once.)
Unlike your deification of Colbert (who was admittedly pretty funny and on point, if a bit ridiculous in his deification of leftism), I agree with most of what you said.
But do science and nature papers really say more? For some disciplines I guess. Not so much for primatology or behavioral ecology in general. Only paper I can recall recently that had any bearing on the research I do (human evolution and primate behavior stuff) was the Dan Lieberman paper about evolution of running in hominids.
I just posted a couple of links (and stated that my wife likes him). Is that deification?
I don't own a TV, but when I did, Fox News and O'Reiley would fascinate me. I never understood why. But now when ever I catch clips of Colbert (like on the plane during my last trip) he's even better. And now I understand. Its how the media (and in this case the far right media) is so distorted that its comical - and the Colbert Report is just the logical extension of the O'Reiley factor. Having said that, I don't think that I could watch his show every day ...
Hi Alex, when did you last read a Nature paper? I am an editor on nature and have been for many many years. I cannot remember the last time we published a "2-page" (I quote you) paper, but it is probably at least 5 years. The average length of a nature paper is more like double that --- 5-7 pages is quite common.
all best
Maxine.
PS On the access problem mentioned here in the comments -- can't speak for other publishers but institutions almost always have site-licence access to Nature which gives complete online access.
Nature ran a debate on this topic a while back which is free-access ;-) and can be see at:
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/index.html
In this debate are artices representing most points of view on the topic, so it might save you writing your post, Alex ;-)
If you're going to critique other writers, it would help if you know the difference between cite and site; and supper and super.
I agree with you Eric, so:
Hi Alex, when did you last read a Nature paper? I am an editor on nature [Nature] and have been for many many [missing comma] years. I cannot remember the last time we published a "2-page" (I quote you) paper [the quote is "2 page" and it's correctly spelled "two-page"], but it is probably at least 5 [five; number spelled unless more than 10] years. The average length of a nature [capitalized Nature] paper is more like double that --- 5-7 pages [a hard break is two dashes without spaces--like this--or one dash with spaces - like this - but I've never seen three dashes] is quite common.
all best [All the best, comma,]
Maxine.
Maxine is an editor? Wouldn't she know to capitalize the title of the publication she works for? Uh-huh.
My utopia: free online access to all academic research, as edited and reviewed by an independent body, authors paid instead of charged, supported by industry, with intense search capabilities and moderated interactivity.
Eric, corrections done.
Yes I know I'm the world's worst writer. (Note that I did not complain about other writer's clarity, simply that Nature papers are extra condensed.) I started a blog to force myself to write, so the whole blog is one long rough draft.
Maxine,
Sure, Nature papers aren't 2 pages long, my complaint is that they are extra condensed. Too many times I've found that reading Nature (and Science) articles on topics outside of my field to be painful. That is the gist of my complaint.
Thanks, Alex, but you did say in your post that the papers are 2 pages long, and that just is not true.
(Incidentally, it is Principal not Principle Investigator).
Printing is very (extremely) expensive, online is not. Pritinting is one reason why journals have to charge subscriptions, which also bugs you. It is hard to have it all ways. The information is not just printed/posted raw from author to journal, it goes through a lot of filtering first. That does not come cheap. Also you get to read the stuff that is worth reading and not that which isn't, by being able to select journals that you find interesting.
Many journals, including Nature and Science, publish online supplementary information accompanying the paper, information which is peer-reviewed, but you don't like that either, you say in your post.
You make one or two specific points about SI. One is about the hosting. The SI is hosted on the journal's servers along with all its other information (the print/online versions of the papers). Is there any reason to think that the SI part will disappear and the rest not? From the web point of view, all the information for the paper is in the same place, but part of it is also in print.
For Nature, and in some (but not all) other journals that host SI, any data in the SI for which there is a public freely accessible, annotated database (eg Genbank), the data have to be deposited there with the accession number given in the journal article.
I think most journals with SI make them part of the online version of the paper. Nature and Science do, in any case.
What is the solution, do you think? We welcome any suggestions.
All best
Maxine.
Thanks for the spell check ... I need to stop writing this as some diatribe-diary ...
I know, it's not simple. My feeling is that if the public wants to see it, they should pay for it too, but from tax dollars. Cost of publication should come out of grants. Here is a question for you, how much does it cost to produce a 5 page article in print? I realize that this proposal requires not only a commitment from the journals but also the government.
But simpler solutions exist as well. Why doesn't Nature provide free access after 1 year of a publication's print date? Other journals, such as JCB, provide this service.
I have other comments ... but a full day ahead of me, I'll try to post other ideas later today.