In which we look again at the question of why, despite the image of physicists as arrogant bastards, biologists turn out to be much less collegial than physicists.<\/i><\/p>\n
————<\/p>\n
While I was away from the blog, there was a spate of discussion of science outreach and demands on faculty time, my feelings about which are a little too complicated to boil down to a blog post in the time I have available. I did notice one thing in Jeanne Garb’s guest blog post at Nature Networks<\/a>:<\/p>\n Yet, given the current system, most scientists are choosing to keep a closed-notebook policy because they fear getting scooped, which is science jargon for idea(s) and\/or data theft. When a scientist is scooped, they are no longer able to report their data as being novel. When the data is not novel, they cannot publish in high impact journals. When they can\u2019t publish in high impact journals, the chances for funding are significantly reduced. When the funding chances are significantly reduced, there is no money to do science. When there is no money to do science, they lose their job and their passion. You get the idea.<\/p>\n It is no wonder that many scientists are careful when they are speaking of their data and experimental designs. It is true even for me, and I am hugely supportive of the open science movement. For instance, I love the idea of Figshare and since I\u2019ve learned about it, I\u2019ve been wanting to upload some data. Yet, something in me kept me from doing so. A lot of my stuff is not yet published \u2013 what if I get scooped? The bricks for my scientific foundation have not yet been laid \u2013 would posting my data demolish my chances?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Once again, I’m struck by the unlikeliness of the arXiv preprint server<\/a>. Which is, after all, an institutionalized form of sharing your results before they’re published in high-impact journals. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes Garb (and the vast majority of other people in the life sciences, judging by the numerous failed attempts to create an arxiv-like service for those fields) so uncomfortable. You’re putting your research out there early, which might give other researchers a chance to build on your results before they’re published, and possibly scoop you on your next publication. Until relatively recently, arXiv postings even counted as prior publication for the purposes of the top journals, so putting a preprint there could block you from publishing the results in Science<\/cite> or Nature<\/cite> (this may have been relaxed somewhat in recent years, but I’m not really sure).<\/p>\n And yet, somehow, this managed to become an absolutely essential component of academic physics. In some fields, it’s the primary component of academic physics– people in high-energy physics rely on the arXiv almost to the exclusion of traditional journals.<\/p>\n And it’s still kind of boggling to me that this actually happened. Because it’s not like the job situation in academic physics is some idyllic golden age– the only difference between academic physics and academic biology is that physics’s job crunch started twenty or thirty years earlier. We’re not enjoying a vast oversupply of jobs in physics (as the depressed postdoc next to me at the bar at DAMOP could testify), and those lucky enough to get academic jobs are not lacking in pressure to publish in high-impact journals. It’s not even that physicists are a bunch of cuddly hippies, either– the high-energy theory community in which the arXiv first took root has a richly deserved reputation for arrogance and a tendency toward extremely harsh commentary. (The “moronic philosopher” crack by Lawrence Krauss that caused so much recent angst<\/a> is not entirely unexpected in that crowd– physicists tend to have very definite opinions, and rarely mince words when speaking of those they think have gone astray.)<\/p>\n And yet, somehow, the arXiv not only managed to gain a foothold, but has thrived. It’s even managed to incorporate a lot of the angst-generating elements of academia– Paul Ginsparg showed a graph of submissions as a function of time, showing an enormous peak around 4pm, which results from people trying to get their paper near the top of the next day’s summary email. People even write automated scripts to ping the arXiv’s server so as to identify the optimal instant for submitting their paper. This is, in some sense, the local equivalent of trying to get into Science<\/cite> or Nature<\/cite>, and the position of a preprint in that summary email has a significant effect on the number of citations that a preprint receives.<\/p>\n A lot of pieces talking about the failure of open access policies to catch on more widely tend to point to the success of the arXiv in physics and math as if it’s the rule and the failure of the life-science versions are the exception. But, given that physics does not lack for high-stakes job competition, or publication pressure, I think this is the wrong way around. It’s not surprising that biologists don’t embrace preprint-sharing; rather, it’s a mystery how the arXiv managed to succeed so brilliantly.<\/p>\n So, what is it about physics that makes preprint sharing work here, while it’s never caught on in the life sciences? Is there some additional structural difference between physics and the life sciences that I’m missing? Or are biologists just bigger assholes than particle physicists?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In which we look again at the question of why, despite the image of physicists as arrogant bastards, biologists turn out to be much less collegial than physicists. ———— While I was away from the blog, there was a spate of discussion of science outreach and demands on faculty time, my feelings about which are… Continue reading How Did the arXiv Succeed?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,72,7,140,11],"tags":[122,84,98,92,149,88],"class_list":["post-7167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-life_science","category-physics","category-publishing","category-science","tag-academia-2","tag-culture-2","tag-outreach-2","tag-physics-2","tag-publishing-2","tag-science-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n