Page 36 - Becoming Metric Wise

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Scientific Research and Communication

research institutes sometimes publish advertisements which have the look
and feel of real research articles, mostly in highly cited journals like
Nature and Science. Although this is duly mentioned in these journals,
this still might lead to confusion among some readers (Chen, 2015).
Such advertisements may even get cited.
We like to mention that, contrary to textbooks for undergraduate stu-
dents, journals are not meant to be repositories of the one and true
knowledge (and according to Popper’s views, textbooks aren’t either).
They should better be considered to be discussions amongst experts, who
might disagree. Journals are a place where experts can exchange methods,
results, opinions, calculations, observations, and the like.

2.3.2 Steps in the Publication Process

Once a researcher or a group of collaborating researchers, decides that
they have obtained results that can be considered to form a coherent unit,
they may want to make these results public. Most of the time this implies
that a text—a first draft—describing their findings is prepared. As the title
is the first aspect colleagues may see, statements made in the title should
be correctly formulated and supported by the evidence presented in the
article. Note that not all scientific results lead to a text: Research findings
may also be communicated under other forms such as a computer pro-
gram, an instrument, or a construction.
This first draft is often presented in an internal seminar. This provides
researchers with immediate feedback. Departmental colleagues may also
help to overcome challenges faced by researchers whose native language
is not English (assuming that publication is intended for an international,
English reading, audience). The revised text, referred to as a preprint, is
then often put in a preprint archive, a so-called e-print archive or reposi-
tory (discussed below). Friends and some colleagues, members of an
invisible college, see Section 2.3.6, may even receive a version before the
text is finished as an e-print, so that they can give early feedback (for
which they will be acknowledged in the final version).
The arXiv (https://arxiv.org)isthe best knownrepository for elec-
tronic preprints of scientific work, mostly covering papers in mathemat-
ics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics,
and quantitative finance. Yet, also informetric articles are accepted. In
many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are
self-archived in the arXiv. The arXiv was originally developed by Paul