Re: Publishing Papers

BMJ wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

Is it possible to get papers published in a reputable journal if one does not have a Ph.D. in the field?


Yes. All you need is a good paper.



WHAAT?! Are we reading the same journals? There's a whole lot of crap (but high quality, pretty looking professional crap) that gets published, even in the top journals. I don't just mean the hooligans (Schon's stuff in Science; fake stem cells in Cell and Nature; etc.). I mean all the "me too" and "same old same old" stuff. I mean stuff that is poorly edited (esp. in more specialized journals that have less editing for grammar, etc.). I know of lousy papers that got published for the flimsiest of reasons (Editor: "Sorry for the delay. I seem to have lost your submisssion. Send me another copy and I'll publish it right away [no refereeing] because I know you're a good guy." Problem: The paper was blatantly wrong.)

To paraphrase Russell.Martin tautologically, to publish, "All you need is a PUBLISHABLE paper.", something that
will pass the referees and editor.


I sometimes have to wonder how closely some papers were scrutinized before being published. I once knew a prof who could have written an excellent paper on the subject he was investigating. Instead, half the data went into one publication. The other half went into another. Half the data from each of those produced yet a third.

Voila! Three for the price of one! Yet nobody seemed to catch on that he did this. Maybe the practice was so commonplace that it was scarcely noticed.

I think everyone notices, and comments are made in passing when socializing at various conferences. So people know who is doing the paper splitting. For young faculty, they may not have much of a choice as the bean counters are just looking for numbers. For someone with tenure, however, there really is no excuse for such behavior.
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