My question is similar to this. If someone wants to publish his work in the medical field, for free but without a review process, how is this seen by the academic world? Are there any online services or platforms that provide this service? Is this usually seen as a problem by the institution in which one may work?
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1Look up all the referring to arxiv.org on this site - it is a major platform for this type of services. The answers to these other questions also mostly answer your question.– DCTLibCommented Feb 10, 2016 at 22:19
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1I see arxiv is based on non health related science, i'm editing my question, thanks for the hint– GGACommented Feb 10, 2016 at 22:20
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3In general, academic research that isn't peer reviewed gets far less attention than research that is. Also, for the medical field in particular, I would wonder about ethical oversight. You generally can't publish in a peer-reviewed journal unless your research was conducted with the oversight of some sort of independent ethics board; if your work didn't have that kind of oversight, it's probably going to be impossible for anyone to make use of it.– Nate EldredgeCommented Feb 10, 2016 at 23:20
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2For example: If you want to publish without peer review, you could just keep a blog and publish whatever you want on it. Does that suit your needs? If not, why not?– ff524Commented Feb 11, 2016 at 1:32
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1I was inspired by a discussion in researchgate (i can't find it now) were they talked about an hypothetic method of publication which was uncontrolled by the big literature firm. Also now the publication of a paper is very delayed in time and there's also publication bias. By publishing it in a platform you could partially avoid these problems and also get a feedback from other experts in the field which is a sort of "peer-review" to assess the validity of a study. A blog is something too much decentralized in my opinion for this kind of work. I hope my comment is clear!– GGACommented Feb 11, 2016 at 7:48
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1 Answer
how is this seen by the academic world?
Generally speaking, as inferior to a peer-reviewed paper. But the 'academic world' is made up of a lot of different people. Assuming you have conducted a high-quality study, the extent to which a reader would consider your findings valid or robust or believable really depends on how they feel about the value added by peer-review. Given the growing evidence of the inadequacy of peer-review, the academic world may increasingly see this type of publication as acceptable. But I would suggest that we are not there yet. A more important question for the context of medical research might relate to how the clinical world would see it.
Are there any online services or platforms that provide this service?
Yes. For example, PeerJ Preprints.
Is this usually seen as a problem by the institution in which one may work?
In terms of medical research I would say it definitely would be seen as a problem if used as an alternative (rather than a complement) to publication in a peer-reviewed journal. At an absolute minimum, your institution would probably expect your research output to be indexed by PubMed. If, however, you use the preprint route as a complement to publication in a peer-reviewed journal then it should not be seen as a problem in itself. It could become a problem if your target journal does not accept papers previously published an another form.
answered May 24, 2016 at 13:50
