Today I want to write a bit about how scientific information is produced, how it gets published, and how or why you should trust it. The process of publishing scientific information is very different from most other publications, and the process can even take several years after the initial discovery or experiment has been done! This might seem very annoying, but this long process ensure that the published research is of high quality, which means that it can be trusted on the basis that is was published.
All of you who already have a science degree won’t learn anything new from this post, but this is instead aimed at giving everyone else a peek into the process of publishing scientific information.
Writing a scientific article
When researchers make a discovery, finish an experiment or end an investigation, they will write it into a type of document called an article. This has very strict guidelines for how it is written, so the researchers/authors must follow these very formal rules when they write this article. This article will include several parts, and the parts depend on what scientific field it is written about. Typically a full article will include an hypothesis that is describing what the researchers are testing or looking at, a method part that tells you how to replicate the experiment or research for yourself, the results that report the results of the experiment while the discussions part discusses these, and finally the conclusion which will tell you how the results fit the hypothesis. In addition there is the abstract, which is kind of like a summary, and this will include the most vital information, making it fast and easy for people to read the abstract and judge if they should take a closer look at the entire article. This abstract is often at the top of the article, and it is what most people actually look at. There are often more parts, but this was a quick introduction to a scientific article. If you’re interested in writing one, or want more information about it, then check out this paper about writing a scientific paper.
The format of an article is to be as precise and short as possible, and this allows even big discoveries to be written on only a few pages worth of paper. Most are under 10 pages long, so it’s a short read, but they can often be very difficult to read for non-scientists, since they don’t waste time to explain anything that is obvious to those who work in the same scientific branch. Even scientists from closely related branch can have a really hard time understanding the papers from the other branch!
Despite being very short, actually writing a scientific article is very difficult, and can often take a long time unless you are good at it. It might not be long, but you often have hundreds of different sources you are linking to, and lots of information that needs to be as compromised as possible.
Now it’s time to peer-review the article
Once an article is finished you would expect it to be published, but it is not that easy! First they have to be peer-reviewed. What this means is that the article is sent to the scientific journal they wish to publish it in. This journal decides they are interested, but not until someone has verified it. In order to do this they send it to 2-4 people who are working with the same type of science, but are not involved in the article. Their job is to try to find problems and faults with the article, and trying to disprove the research.
If these peer-reviewers find faults in the study design or the method, then the researchers who did the experiment might have to scrap the entire thing. Luckily it is usually not that bad, but it happens from time to time! Often they find minor mistakes when they peer-review papers, and this can then be returned to the researchers, corrected, and peer-reviewed again. Even renowned scientists have to peer-review their work before they can publish it, and even these often need to fix some minor mistakes before it is published.
There are some scientific journals that do not require articles to be peer-review, and this is typically a very bad sign. I don’t really trust these articles myself unless I find another good reason to, since I think it is pretty shady to decide to publish "good" research in a “bad” scientific journal that does not even check out if it’s good research or not.
When the paper gets accepted
If (or when) the peer-review is accepted, the paper can finally be published in a scientific journal. There are many of these, and some have a much better reputation than others. Most are very niche specific, while others accept submissions from a much broader branch of science.
Most reputable scientific papers are hidden behind paywalls, and these can often be extremely expensive! You typically get access to them for free if you work at or attend a university, but not all. There are however some journals that are well-renowned, but are still completely free. Luckily the abstract (the summary of the most important findings in the paper) is usually always available for free, so this means that anyone can check it to verify information that they have been given. I often link to articles that are pay-to-read, but the abstract should be good enough to verify that what I write in my post is in fact “true”.
Anyway, when the paper is published, the information is freely available to use, despite the fact that reading the original article might cost you money. At this point you can freely write about the discovery, include it in textbooks, or use it as a source when publishing new findings about the same type of research.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for reading about how scientific information is published!
When you are reading this, keep in mind that I am an ecologist. I have done my best to make the post apply to scientific methods in general, but some things are certainly different for some branches of science. For example, I am only familiar with experimental studies, and the details on how you would do studies that are purely based on literature might be a bit different.
Anyway, this is a really big topic, but now you are hopefully introduced to how you get your science information delivered to your favorite websites or Steem authors.
Great article! I think it would be interesting to write out a timeline for the publishing process as well. I know it varies between different fields. For example, we had one paper go from concept to journal acceptance in 2 years (cell motility) and another paper take three years just to collect data (clinical research)!
Thank you, @tszasz!
Yeah, that's true. There are even lots of papers out there who have collected data for 30+ years, so the timeframe could be pretty much anything.
@valth you recalled me, old university days where we did the same. For me the most difficult part was peer-review, but in this process you learnt a lot. Publishing a paper with out oeer review is a bad practice. Its just like to sell a daimond in a raw form (without finishing). Great post for students. Keep sharing
That's a good analogy with the diamonds, @kamchore! Yeah, the peer review is very nice for learning, and often I'm sure you can learn a lot of things you had not thought about when you wrote it in the first place :)
You are not kidding about those papers being difficult to write. I know people that spend months writing up their papers and going through review process. Most describe it as the leas"fun" part of their job. Though I have been told its significantly less painful if you have a few good co-authors as you have someone to bounce ideas off, and you are all constantly reviewing each others work.
@strongerbeings
Yeah, it surely does take a long time! I have never published anything personally, so I can't really speak from my own experiences, but it sure sounds like a good idea to have some co-authors. It is also very common to write these in groups today (compared to 50 years ago when most papers were done by a single person).
Although you mentioned you were really writing this for the people without a degree in science, it's a great summation of the process and a reminder for those that do.
It's easy to gloss over some details in an article that really should be included or not show the entire process.
This ia a good article for students! You might crosspost in education or perhaps write a slightly different version for school students.
Yeah, I suppose it's useful for those of you who need to refresh your memory a bit ;) I guess most people learn this as their introduction to science, so it can be easy to forget the process after a few years of studying.
Posting it with the #education tag is a good idea, and I wish I had remembered that tag when I posted it. It sounds like a cool idea to write it into a student version / guide! Maybe I will be doing that at one point. I'm already working on creating a "course" / education series here on Steemit, so this could probably fit into it at one point ;)
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment, @madlila!
Very nice article....
You reminded me of my MS Process Engineering Day....
I often used to read 10 - 20 research papers before writing a review report...
Yes you are write about abstract, it does gives the quick/ brief introduction helping reader to quickly decide the article aligns with his/her research interests!
Thank you! Reading 20 of these every day must have been pretty fatiguing, especially if you read the whole thing. A lot of scientific articles are really good, but there are also many that are excruciatingly boring :P
No quite the opposite....I wasn't boring at all, I actually loved reading papers. Its all about the passion...
e.g If I give you a long paper about ground breaking discovery in biology, I doubt that you will ever get bored reading it; because you are passionate about that field:)
Yeah, that is of course true, but it all depends on the content of course :) It just sounds like a huge amount when you read 20 every day; that must have taken so many hours. But as you're saying, it's nice if you are passionate about it!
Yeah it can be time consuming but I just love to read practices and ideas of people who share the my passion....
I am an engineer and it always intrigues me to read other engineer's work and methodology...Every time you read some one else's work you learn something new and unique...
And that's how science progressed over the ages; sharing the ideas!
That's true! Reading about how the great minds before you solved the issues they faced is a good way to learn a lot about the things you are studying. The method part is especially important (at least for biology), since it can teach us to solve problems in a different way then we normally would.
In my country they are trying to replace the research work of degree which looks like a monograph for a scientific article to be received, the latter from own experience generates greater demands regarding research and even practical contributions. You can give me your vote in my post of presentation
Yeah, we have the option to do this here in Norway as well, but it is much more time-consuming for students, so most opt for a monograph-type of thesis. However, you are completely correct, because it would be a lot better for society if everyone published their results as a scientific article.
Good information @valth, thanks for sharing. Great post :)
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it :)
thanks for the information
You're welcome :)
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