Today I got a Google alert about my former advisor publishing an article and decided to have a look. I was a bit taken aback when I saw that the main photo published with the article was one I had taken in my free time during field work (I work in natural resource science). My advisor never asked my permission to publish my photograph and the photo is now attributed to them not me. I like my former advisor and we are on good terms so is it worth rocking the boat over a photograph?
I have a little analysis that I made in financial agriculture that would be insightful for the professionals of agriculture (like farmers). I was thinking of publishing it in an agricultural magazine instead of an academic one. Itโs very empirical and doesnโt have much theoretical background. Is it a bad idea ? Would it have any value in the academic world ?
The first part of the latest podcast had me scratching my head and I wondered what others thought.
Sam Talks about his academic paper from 2016 and notes that it's got the 26th most engagement out of all articles written at that time.
The paper is here.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589?mod=article_inline
Now nature is not to be sniffed at and Harris has done some real academic work in the past but something really threw me about the way he spoke about this.
I work in academia and the engagement number he made a big deal of, really isn't. The more important number in academia is citations, and this paper has 71 which, while ok, is no big deal at all.
Another paper from the same journal at the same year has 94 citations.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39619
You could find lots of papers from the same year with hundreds of citations. A 2015 Chomsky paper was cited around 530 times (according to google scholar).
http://www.ciscl.unisi.it/ad60/doc/08_chomsky_abs.pdf
The point I am making here is that, contrary to how Sam presented this paper, the engagement score says nothing very interesting about science. It just says that people clicked on that paper a lot. Now, being as the author is a very famous figure, and that not many famous figures write academic articles, this really isn't surprising. In fact, a breakdown of the stats show most of this "engagement" came from people sharing it on twitter.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589/metrics
People like Michael Shermer etc, shared it so it got seen by a lot of people.
https://twitter.com/michaelshermer/status/814629964989407232
All this metric is measuring is that someone clicked on the site. Not that they read it, not that they cited it...just that they accessed it. For someone with a huge fanbase, this isn't that surprising, is it?
So here's what confuses me. Does Sam know this and he's just dishonestly pushing the engagement stats for some reason or does he not know this, in which case, why does he, as a PhD not know this?
A third option is that I'm just confused about something, in which case someone please let me know what it is.
Hello all,
I recently had a paper accepted for publication with minor revisions (woot!) with my old advisor (switched advisors, but still work with my first for this paper and an old lab project). The old advisor is not necessarily supportive of family (e.g., getting married or having children while in graduate school) and messaged me today about the comments on the ms and suggested talking to the journal about making them a second corresponding author or just taking over the ms. I'd like to believe that this comes from a good place, but it gives me major weird vibes. I am still finishing up my PhD and do not want this person to be corresponding author. And I'm still two months out from my due date, but also have a fierce 'I can do anything while being a parent' attitude and do not let responsibilities go easily.
Any thoughts on how to hand said situation?
I'm curious if anyone with a PhD in STEM has any insider knowledge on what it's like to work in academic publishing (e.g., Assistant or Senior Editor at high impact journals like Nature):
- How hard is it to get a job in science communication at the PhD level? (Do you even need a doctorate to be considered? Any jobs open at just the bachelor's or master's level?). With there being such a scarcity of TT faculty positions and lots of people heading towards industry, will science communication jobs become increasingly competitive?
- What is job security like? If you landed a job as a full-time editor at a renowned journal, would you theoretically be employed for as long as you want to be there (assuming you perform well)?
- What is the salary range like for editors in academic journals?
- What is the work life balance like? Editorial work seems like a pretty straightforward desk job, but I imagine there would be a lot of pressure meeting deadlines, especially with a high volume of submissions. Does working as an editor allow for a 9-5 lifestyle? Or, do editors often work odd hours and weekends too?
- How much of the job involves independent "desk" work, and how much of it involves conferencing, presenting, extroverted people skills?
I'm mostly interested in hearing about careers in academic publishing, but I'm also curious about less traditional routes where there is a focus on communicating scientific information to the general public in a "pop science" way.
Thanks!
TL;DR Should I make the effort to write an academic paper on my thesis work? I've also published in r/cscareerquestions but I have a feeling I'll get more relevant answers here.
I'm finishing my graduate degree in physics studying deep neural networks after a bachelor degree in physics & CS. My PI wants us to write a paper about my thesis work and I'm wondering whether it's worth the effort.
I'd like to find a job soon as an algorithm researcher, ideally in a non-applied setting (researching algorithms and not specific applications). I've seen in some places (Google for example) they specifically require that you have published papers in one of the big ML conferences.
Past experience has taught me that our work is a little too heavy on the physics side for these conferences and the acceptance process takes months without guarantees. I could probably publish in a physics journal but I doubt anyone would care about it (I already published a paper on ML in a physics journal where I'm credited as an equal contributor).
With this in mind, should I make the effort to write a paper?
What is your opinion about thousands of dollars being charged in the name of publishing charges by many journals?
Request
Looking for someone to help our English language editing company identify potential clients in China (we are open to other areas to expand if your language skills are different, e.g. Japanese, Polish etc.). Native Mandarin language proficiency is a must (or alternative language). Our target clients are Chinese scientists and scholars who publish in English speaking academic journals. Price negotiableโpm and I'll provide more info. Business is a worker cooperative. Possibly ongoing.
Just curious about the process and the rigour of such a process. I notice that compared to scientific endeavours there are more people simply outright publishing books (Dale Allison and NT Wright come to mind) than publishing things to journals.
In science, a paper can be retracted if the findings cannot be replicated. When would a paper be retracted in the academic biblical field?
Basically, how do you get published, how rigorous is the process (I know it's going to depend on the journal), and how would a paper be retracted or removed from a journal?
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