
‘Journalologists’ use scientific methods to study academic publishing - sohkamyung
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/journalologists-use-scientific-methods-study-academic-publishing-their-work-improving
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tokai
Journalologism seems like an insular discipline, by medical scientists,
overlooking the already substantial research discipline of biblio-, infor-,
scientometrics.

If you want to study scientific communication, it is downright daft to limit
yourself to the journal as your only one unit of analysis.

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scott_s
When you study something, you have to focus somewhere. It is not "daft" to
focus on something, even if you and everyone else know there is more out there
- you only have limited time and effort. The hope is that others will focus on
the other things.

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tokai
The issue is that journals have already been studies for over 60 years (closer
to 100 actually), in the wider context of general scientific communication.
You can find literally thousands of papers dealing with questions about
journals in the bibliometric/scientometric literature. Coining a new
discipline without acknowledging prior research, while at the same time
choosing an arbitrary delimitation of your object of study (scientific
communication), is at the best daft and at the worst a scam.

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scott_s
This is a popular science article about the work of a bunch of researchers. I
think it's fair to assume the researchers have an understanding of how their
work fits into the larger field in a way not represented by the author of the
popular science article.

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sideshowb
But who journalologises the journalologists?

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kanox
jornalolologists

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zhdc1
This is nothing surprising. The study of bibliometrics has been going on since
the 1960s, and the field of bibliography (in its modern academic sense) is a
lot older than that.

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scott_s
I'm confused why you lead with "This is nothing surprising." The article does
not present it as a surprise, but as something the reader may not know - which
is standard for any article. The author is also clear in explaining that this
process has been going on for decades.

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nonbel
Its common to think if your research results are not novel it isnt worth
publishing. That's one reason why there is a replication crisis.

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scott_s
I am also aware of that, and it's talked about in the article as well. What
relationship does that fact have with our current discussion?

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nonbel
I figured the person you were responding to held that attitude. That if an
idea is not novel its not worth publishing, like this story in their opinion.

