Hello steemians! Ok, truth to be told, I am going to dropout from my phd soon. Personal circumstances did not allow me to continue with the research. Yet, I still remain in love with what i am doing, so much so i decide that I am going to continue my independent research. And i decide to share my research results with the Steemit community some time in the future with some fine-tuning in the depth of posts. There are a few reasons why I am doing this.
Current landscape in academia and why it is a problem
First, journal publications are very expensive - can be anything from USD10,000 per year and USD 10 - USD 30 per journal paper depending on the field. These journal publishers have increased their annual subscription every year but most university library budgets are not growing at the same rate. Hear this - In 2015, the academic publisher Elsevier earned about $1.58 billion in profit or about $9.36 billion in revenue. In fact, they are earning much more than Facebook or International Banks of China. With access to internet and free peer reviews, we would expect that the costs of journal publishing should go south. But it seems that this is not the case.
This problem is so severe that even ivy league universities find this hard to swallow. If Harvard university can no longer afford to pay, I wonder how other universities researchers in developing countries are coping with the limitation of literature. And indeed, it was the similar predicament that lead Alexandra Elbakyan, a Kazakhstan university student to create Sci-hub. This lead to a lawsuit from Elsevier to Sci-hub and Alexandra Elbakyan. An article here did some research using Sci-hub traffic data and found out that in fact, Sci-hub users are scattered all around the world, even in the States.
This situation has led many researchers to break the copyright law. But they did it with the underlying good intention to seek for relevant literature because they were blocked by publishers' desire for more profits. The way that scientific knowledge is monetized in the modern day today for more profits at the expense of scientists doing good for the improvement of humanity is beyond me. Putting a price tag on knowledge which is explored and created by scientists, and then asking scientists to pay for their own work. Something here surely does not add up.
We need an alternative model for research dissemination.
Importance of knowledge decentralization and management
In a post by @anwenbaumeister, she talked about steemit’s potential for decentralization of knowledge. I believe that steemit with huge potential for knowledge decentralization, can draw power away from exorbitant journal publishers and return this power back to scientists, the knowledge explorers. Knowledge should not be managed by centralized publishers. Steemit and steem blockchain can be a potential alternative model for scientists to contribute their work directly for impact and influence. Imagine an awesome knowledge center to collect and spread valuable knowledge and information. A centre for academicians to illustrate expertise, debate and discuss.
How steemit can be a knowledge centre even for layman
I am not asking Steemit to award me with a PhD. But I would like to show what I am doing here is an example of how not only valuable knowledge can be decentralized, such knowledge can be managed. This also includes the communication channels of your research. At one point during the last 2 years of my PhD, i wondered if my mentor ever read the things i wrote. And then i realized there will just be 3 people reading my PhD thesis. That will be my mentor, the examiner and maybe my husband. That was also when i noticed that more people are reading my blog than my phd thesis. That is fully understandable. I mean who wants to read a 30,000 word long and boring thesis unless they have to. BUT, if the thesis were to be transformed into information readable and useful for the layman, i can imagine that piece of information delivering more impact for the community.
People in niche expertise may agree with this:- it is harder to communicate your research to layman than to your peers in the same field. I have been blogging passionately about design thinking at steemit, pretty much in layman terms. I hope that my effort can give steemit and steemians added value in terms of knowledge sharing and intellectual discussion.
Appeal to scientists: Join us
Join steemit and be part of this awesome wave! Try it. If you do blog about your expertise, be it economics, science and engineering, social sciences, please tag as #academia so that i can follow you. Waiting for you. :-)
P/S: Thanks for the positive response. Would like to raise awareness on the #pevo project which i am part of. See @pharesim's post here Also see https://pevo.science/
P/P/S: Thanks for the coffee guys :-) Never expected this response. of course, big things do not happen overnight. But, let's start small and gain awareness. Have thought of a few ideas for the scientific community on steemit. Keep steeming on!
What a wonderful post! I was drawn immediately to your article before knowing that you had included a reference to one of mine which was a pleasant surprise. You hit the nail on the head when saying:
I'm so excited for the future of decentralized knowledge and that Steemit has people like you who are heading the movement.
Steem it is the new form of knowledge management
I sincerely hope so
If we are able to mature enough to use the platform as envission by its devs it will be a goldmine of ideas and knowledge... it could transform in to a virtual library of good contents with feedbacks.
By the way i just followed you guys, id love to inteact more with active authors like you...
Here is a new type of post about my first salvia trip man please check it out and let me know what ya think :D
https://steemit.com/new/@stealthtrader/my-first-salvia-trip
@anwenbaumeister I like to cite great and inspiring articles. And that one of yours is great. :-)
Thanks so much! As is yours :-)
Hi, I am/was contemplating the same thing but wasn't sure if this was the platform to present new immunology/medicine research insights. Seeing the response to your post shifts my opinion a lot. Thanks!
Hi I am surprised myself. I guess it would be interesting for layman to understand why your research is important and how it can affect them directly or indirectly. Will hop over to your blog!
Absolutely. Academia has become a bit of a tightened up environment that presents information to a lay person in a mostly indigestable fashion. I think, while academic writing definitely has a purpose, there first needs to be more accessible material that actually makes a lay person want to study things further! I liken it to playing a four movement symphony to a 10 year old who's never listened to such music before and wondering why they're not engaged. Steemit is a great platform for this. I should get my best friend onto this, he was doing a phd on the Malaria drug at Melbourne uni. Look forward, to reading your future posts :)
Sounds great! Yes, there is a lot of information in academia text that can be transformed into interesting content for the layman. I look forward to doing that :-)
Something needs to be done about these greedy capitalists that make so much profits off the scientists who do the work and who are engaged in publication . What if we make steemit like service for scientists. One that is blockchain based. One that will have scientific witness. Those who do good work and make good publications are rewarded blockchain dollars. How about it?
Yes, we have this #pevo project. please do hop to https://pevo.science/ and have a look
Good move! Elsevier and other scientific journal publishers are corrupt. If you are GlaxoSmithKline for example and you don't like a particular article about one of your products then you can have it retracted. One of Elsevier's sites ( http://www.elsmediakits.com/us ) even calls itself "Elsevier Phama Solutions". Is it clear they provide a service to pharma and not to science? Open source research is the way to go.
Interesting question between science ethics and business, isn't it? Sounds like a good blog post for you!
It is very brave of you to make a change like this and lose no vigor in your work. Bravo!
Wish you the best
Thanks. I guess passion indeed plays a part and draw courage
Nice, decentralize everything! Distributed research is the future!
Yes, it is!
I agree and applaud you!
lol thanks for the dance
It is indeed crazy that all these scientific discoveries, mainly funded by governments are not freely distributed for everyone to use. Some journals are opposing this habit nowadays, but everyone wants to hit science or nature if they could chose. I hope a lot of young researchers will use the new media to communicate and share their research with the world for the better of all.
Good luck with your research!
Greets,
Thanks for the luck. I guess "publish or perish" notion among researchers is still very strong. Of course, researchers who wish to establish themselves strongly in their field would choose Science or Nature. But with social media, new technology, hopefully it will improve the landscape.
Welcome to a Social Media Revolution! Good luck to you on Steemit. You control where you go from here, what you do and don't do in your life, but I hope you strive to continue with your goals and your dreams. Don't give up..... Too many people do. I truly believe that.....
Thanks for the luck. Will need it. Yes, it is a dream and i hope to achieve it
This is interesting. I finished my PhD years ago so I know how the system works. You spend years doing interesting research. Then finally you manage to write a good article. You send it to a journal. But the journal isn't doing much. They just send your paper for review to other scientist they know are important in the field. Than these scientist review it and if they all say you paper is good, then the journal publishes the paper.
But the journal does absolutely nothing. The review proces is free for them. I also received many emails to review papers. Of course, I never got paid for reviewing. Not that I mind reviewing it for free. The problem is that these journals later on sell these papers for big money. That's what I hate. Scientists are doing all this work for free, but 1 greedy journal is getting tons of money.
Steemit could solve this problem. We should make scientific communities here on Steemit and to the delegation work the journals are doing and then if the papers are reviewed, they can be put here online for free.
Yes, i used to do peer reviews for free as well until one day, i realized why am i staying up till the wee hours of the night. Then i started to reject the requests. I did got a certificate of appreciation from a journal publisher though. Hopefully steemit can also amass a scientific community. I think it will be valuable.
I think Steemit will become a new way to communicate information to all levels. Bravo
Thanks. Indeed, it is.
It is wery nice for me to witnes all the great bloggers who actualy join steemit, and actualy would like to truy it out.
This revolution within Social media is awesome, when peaple like you could join us :) Im glad for this post.
Hope you keep going on ^^
Thanks I hope more academic guys can join us at steemit too
Now, this was a good read! If only stuff like this was up in the front of every headline!
Thanks. Very flattering.
Awesome, it's great to see academics on Steemit! Would love to know more about the research you were doing for your PhD- will you be continuing down the same path?
It's a really great idea, I'm sure the smarter steemers of us can help you finish your research. A formal PhD or not - knowledge is knowledge. PhD is just a piece of paper.
I am in the area of 3d printing. Evaluating the environmental sustainability, ecosystems and business models. Yes, i will be writing about #3dprinting.
Yes, i agree. Part of reason why i want to go down this path is that many people who have made significant impact in their scientific field in fact, did not have a PhD. see https://steemit.com/phd/@coinbitgold/love-hate-relationship-with-phd
Hope to hear more about 3d printing. A a whole new innovation and if like to how it will affect industries in the manufacturing area.
That's VERY interesting! I'm fascinated by 3D Printing, and can't wait to see this technology scale up. Look forward to your posts.
What is your PhD program currently? Are you on Linkedin? This is a great post, but would be great to verfiy who you are outside of Steemit. I'd love to connect!
I am in a product design & engineering program. Are you in slack? We can chat there! :-)
It's really good to see great mind like yours attracted by Steemit. This platform have great potential !
Thanks . I hope more like-minded people can join steemit
Wish you all the best!
Thanks for wishes
Great article! Keep up the good work! Go steem!
Thanks! Steem!
So many great points in this post. I too believe steemit will provide a new platform for dissemination of scientific and academic research. It could revolutionize the public understanding of science by demanding research papers be ready-made for public, rather than specialist consumption.
Respect to you! #academia
Thanks!!! :-) Yes, i genuinely hope it could!
Nice to meet you!
Nice to meet you too?????
Welcome to steemit! I'm happy to see more academics joining. I'm finishing up a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and I totally agree with you about the sites potential . Looking forward to reading more from you.
Thanks! Do blog on neuroscience too. I have not got a clue in neuroscience but i am sure it will be interesting with brain networks and nodees, maybe??? Hopping over to your blog!
Unfortunately we live in a world of unbridled capitalism. Welcome to the revolution, welcome to steemit
Haha, isn't steemit the utter epitome of unbridled capitalism? The more money you have, the louder you get to speak.
Steemit is a dream come true for many steemians around here :-)
Welcome and good luck!
Thanks!
Keep up the good work ! Very well written article .
Thanks for compliments!
Note that you lose your ownership of the content here (see ToS).
Also, there's no version control for the user.
Also, you can't get paid after 30 days.
Thanks for the note. With journal publishers, there is transfer of copyright too. And you need to pay for your paper. An important reason why researchers publish papers is to deliver impact and influence. I believe there are other ways in which researchers can deliver impact.
This is a very interesting topic - I've never thought about it before in this way, but you are right. You spend YEARS writing your phd thesis, and in the end, no one is going to read that ?! What a waste! I've studied computer sciences myself but in the end, I didn't even use the knowledge that I gained in university. I taught myself the most! So I'm sure you'll go your way and I'm excited to read about your projects in the future. Keep up the good work and don't let other people pull you down !
Thanks for the encouragement! ;-)
I love that even though you can't go to school anymore, that you're going to continue with your PhD here on Steemit.
I love what i do. Steemit came very timely.
I think though that such articles you should be able to reward indefinitely
Yup, will see how other scientists can get some "coffee" too
excellent women! congratulation.
Thanks.
"How steemit can be a knowledge centre even for layman"
Totally agree, the potential of Steemit is far greater than folks making quick bucks on posting about Steemit and cryptocurrencies (though I am OK with such entrepreneurship, and I'm learning a lot from those posts!).
I look at posts like: https://steemit.com/steem/@artakan/this-table-will-help-you-pick-up-the-right-tag-for-your-post and see that "science" has some ranking, but "art" doesn't, just as examples of how to measure cultural flows. So if we want to see Steemit as a true and better competitor to Facebook, Reddit and the like, and become so very much more (as your post portends) then it is imperative that posts on people's search for knowledge find popularity and help fund their lifestyles to allow further knowledge to be gained.
"see Steemit as a true and better competitor to Facebook, Reddit and the like, and become so very much more (as your post portends) then it is imperative that posts on people's search for knowledge find popularity and help fund their lifestyles to allow further knowledge to be gained." How apt. I actually hope that arts in academia will find some standing too.
Interesting... Perhaps we should collaborate. I'm working on my PhD as well, and am getting close to finishing up.
Congrats. PM me in slack if you are in slack?
I'd love to be in slack... How do I sign up?
https://steem.slack.com/
To do that it says I need an @steemit.com email address, which I do not have. Do I need an invite?
@biophil, if you are interested to join pevo, please email me at [email protected] thanks
Welcome @coinbitgold! I love how you bring up some of the problems with academia and the possibility of decentralizing knowledge.
Seriously? All the "brilliant" people who do original research haven't figured out how to get a lot of the profits themselves?
Thanks. I guess 'brilliant' people are busy with "publish or perish". I can understand that. Either that or awareness of this may be low.
Cool
Thanks
Ur welcome @coinbitgold
I really like this post, but not your conclusion.
I'd like to see steemit as an academy, with it's own titles and tokens.
And a new form of #academia could evolve here, call it a #steemuniversity
i am glad that it inspired you in another way. Feel free to call it #steemuniversity too. The intention is really to follow the academia stuff
#academia is where it is, because #philosophy is not respected as a fundamental science.
welcome to #steemuniversity @coinbitgold :)
Glad to see people like thinking of inventive ways to use the platform. Would be nice to free up that knowledge.
"free up that knowledge" Well-said :-)
This is really cool. If you don't mind me asking, where were you doing your PhD? NTU?
Not NTU. Not NUS. :-)
Haha well wherever it is, I wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose to do next. Nice to see you're being appreciated here rather than being published in a journal that not many would read :P
Hi ! Thank for you post! Welcome to Steem!))) I invite you to read my blog! I need your opinion!
Will hop over :-)
I like your idea, coinbit. I have done an MBA and also realised, no-one reads your dissertation. I will gladly participate in your project. Knowledge should be free. It is wat you do with the knowledge which is important and on which you can put a price tag.
Thanks for liking. I am inspired by the #pevo project. You are welcome to join us.
Hi @coinbitgold, well done. We shouldn't be limited by structural institutions and business as-usual in anything really. Including scientific research. I also was forced to stop a PhD midway (after mid-term review), for many reasons. But I continued research in companies, and the real world. I've self funded for the last 4.5 years now and have published a lot of papers myself with a small team here. This has led me to use a lot of SSRN and even steemit as well recently. It is super hard. Hopefully steemit can improve that, and from what i've read from understanding the underlying mechanics of how steemit works- gives me a lot of hope. The move to decentralization is massive, and there is absolutely no way to halt it because it is evolutionary.
" I've self funded for the last 4.5 years now and have published a lot of papers myself with a small team here. This has led me to use a lot of SSRN and even steemit as well recently. "
Very inspiring! That is exactly the kind of route i am seeking for. And i am glad that steemit came!
incredible how you can use steemit:) I am curious about your professors. What are they saying about this?
I juest followed you :-)
Thanks :-)
Hope your lecturers will be ready for the big surprise.
This is definitely an issue in academia. As I transition into more research, I am likely going to broadcast it all to Steemit first.
congratulations, I had no idea that the scholars went so apparently is a constant war between helping and profit !
How can someone down vote this article...sheer stupidity if you ask me...smh
I don't understand either. Did not ask them why. Their choice to downvote.
survivors joined steemit
lol u mean people who survived the phd?
Good ! Welcome coinbitgold !
Steemit Is Not A Casino