An open letter to scientists
Dear science,
Please stop publishing in closed journals such as Nature and Science.
It makes me and others very reluctant to cite you when we can't read the papers we are meant to be citing. I can't really be bothered jumping through hoops logging in through proprietary library interfaces instead of just clicking through the ADS database. In fact, in attempting to gain access to a 21 year old seminal piece of work in Nature just now, it completely eludes me.
The high citation indexes associated with such journals is completely artificial, particularly in this age when we use sophisticated databases and don't browse dead-tree journals anymore. People think they need to publish in them to get high numbers of citations, so they publish their more compelling research there. Which is the most desirable research which is going to return the most numbers of citations anyway. You *could* be perfectly happy publishing to ApJ. Or PASA. You'll get the same number of citations, and have the benefit of people actually being able to read your article.
In practice, most Nature papers I have read today have been light on information and fluffy, not allowing other scientists to replicate or verify the findings in a robust way without a followup paper somewhere else. And then you get the junk but popular science like the work on Galactic Habitable Zones.
Please stop publishing in closed journals such as Nature and Science.
It makes me and others very reluctant to cite you when we can't read the papers we are meant to be citing. I can't really be bothered jumping through hoops logging in through proprietary library interfaces instead of just clicking through the ADS database. In fact, in attempting to gain access to a 21 year old seminal piece of work in Nature just now, it completely eludes me.
The high citation indexes associated with such journals is completely artificial, particularly in this age when we use sophisticated databases and don't browse dead-tree journals anymore. People think they need to publish in them to get high numbers of citations, so they publish their more compelling research there. Which is the most desirable research which is going to return the most numbers of citations anyway. You *could* be perfectly happy publishing to ApJ. Or PASA. You'll get the same number of citations, and have the benefit of people actually being able to read your article.
In practice, most Nature papers I have read today have been light on information and fluffy, not allowing other scientists to replicate or verify the findings in a robust way without a followup paper somewhere else. And then you get the junk but popular science like the work on Galactic Habitable Zones.