Why did I decided to show my papers in Internet?
This letter contains the analysis of the present day system of the publication of scientific papers. It contains, also, my propositions in order to improve the system. The letter does not concern the publications of secret materials. It is devoted to the publication of scientific papers which can be submitted to any journal (conference) by any scientist.
The free, widely available publication of any new paper (unpublished anywhere yet) in the full text form at the Internet is understandable, but absurd now. Most of my colleagues will think that I went off my head if I do it. Nevertheless, I am doing it and I will try to explain my decision.
It is really a frantic gesture, because this way I will have the following serious problems:
1. most journals will not accept these papers after this publication.
2. no scientific council, in Russia, will not consider these papers as my scientific publications, because the highest certifying commission (in Russia) will not do it, also.
3. I cant defend my Ph.D. thesis if it is based on these papers, although I have spent a lot of time (14 years) in developing a modelling approach shown at these papers.
4. the absence of a scientific degree can brings me to a hard financial state and to the corresponding consequences.
In short, I can get very serious problems.
Nevertheless, the present day policy of the scientific papers publication must be changed radically. At present time, the process of the publication of scientific papers can be characterized by the following features:
1. very often the author of a scientific paper must send to the journal both the submitted paper and reviewers notes. Otherwise, the editorial board of a journal send this paper to its own reviewers;
2. the process of a paper review can take a lot of time (from 3 month to 1year);
3. an accepted paper is published some time later;
4. the publication process (the author participation in a conference) is not free very often;
5. a paper is published in a journal in the full text form. The materials of a conference contain, as a rule, only summaries of accepted papers/reports. To obtain the full text form of some papers is a very complex problem.
Now, let us analyse the following corresponding features of the process:
1. the reviewers notes, attached by the author, to a submitted paper are no guarantee of the high scientific quality of the submitted paper. It is not a secret that sometime such reviewers only sign, without reading, their notes prepared by the paper author. The limited number of experts (2-3) examine the paper submitted to a journal. It is a generally adopted point of view that these people are well-qualified specialists in the corresponding scientific field. It should have been so, in reality. Nevertheless, sometime the professional level of such specialists is not high enough to evaluate some papers. The evaluations of such specialists and the limited number of the one-purpose journals are the reason why some papers can not be published for a long of time (buried in oblivion) and the carriers some of scientists fall to the ground. In this case the objective scientific appraisal is substituted by the power of the limited number such specialists (deciding to publish a paper). Such specialists do not help a scientist to show his results to other scientists, but they impose their opinion on all scientific community and hamper the publication of the unwanted or misunderstood papers. So, the present system of the submitted papers selection is very conservative, aggressive toward other points of views, and faulty. The big stream of dull papers published in some scientific journals is the result of this paper selection system. I believe that the conclusion about the scientific quality of any paper must be made by the time and the maximum number of specialists in the corresponding scientific field, but not by the limited number of specialists. The objective conclusion can be made on the primary, available to all scientists interested in it publication and open discussion of all submitted papers. Someone can tell me that it will lead to a big stream of dull papers in journals. I agree with it, but this stream must be directed to the public and free of charge Web sites of one-purpose journals (conferences). Every registered author gets his own Web Page (on the journal/conference Web site) or informs the journal editorial board about the electronic address of his Web site where his submitted papers are located (the last method is cheaper for the journal editorial board). Thus, all interested in the author papers readers can read them at the same moment. Periodically, the journal editorial board must make selection of the most popular submitted papers. The journal readers notes, concerning any submitted paper must be public and can be used, by the author to defend his dissertation. These data must be taken into account by any scientific council and highest certifying commission giving a scientific degree (award) in any country. It is the way to decrease experts mistakes and the influence of the corrupt agreements in the course of the defending of dissertations.
2. the review process, in the proposed method, is based on the estimation of an average rating of a paper. It is obvious, that the time for such estimation will be short for the most interesting paper.
3. any submitted paper is available to every reader at the moment of its submission.
4. authors pay nothing or a small amount of money , depending on the service the journal offers. The self-repayment of a journal is based on the growth of published papers number, different kind of the services (selling of the printed collection of top papers, single papers). The self-repayment of a conference is based on the growth of the number of their participants when authors of top papers take part at the conference, different kind of the services (selling of the printed collection of most interesting papers, single papers).
5. papers and conference materials are published free of charge in the journal (conference) Web site at the full text form. The printed form of any paper or top papers collection can be ordered (on the basis of price list).
I understand that these proposals are not final. Id like to begin a discussion about this subject. It is clear that the present system of scientific papers publication is out of date and must be cardinally changed.
Id like to express my thanks to my co-authors (candidate of chemical science Abolin Oleg Eduardovich and candidate of chemical science Danolov Vladimir Grigorievich) for their support of my position and their agreement with our paper publication at my Web site.
Alexander Shagaev.
