Abstract
Much has been said and written on the need for research scientists to publish their results. While scientists with publishing responsibilities differ in their ability to conduct research and vary in their personal attitude toward publishing, the failure to publish by scientists is widespread throughout academia and research organizations. Five reasons or categories are identified which may impede publishing scientific work. The categories are:
While this is not an exhaustive list, these five provide some of the more familiar reasons for perishing. The reasons for not publishing may change during a scientist's career or may vary with each study and data set. All scientists must publish their work. The research was never really conducted if it is not published.
Introduction
Many types of scientists exist. Almost all scientists
initiate their careers in a graduate program, which requires them
to conduct a research project and write a thesis. After
graduation, these scientists enter the job market and accept
positions that may or may not be related to areas in which they
were trained. Most scientists are trained as researchers in their
academic program but often scientists at their new jobs are given
only teaching or administrative responsibilities. Such
individuals are not assigned to do research and therefore are not
required to write research articles. Other scientists accept
employment in a service area and spend most of their time
employed as a field person for government, industry, or
extension. Generally, these field personnel do not have
responsibilities to conduct research projects and publish in
journals. Many scientists, however, secure positions at
universities or with government or industry research
organizations. These scientists are hired to do research and to
write research results in journals or reports. This article is
written to these researchers; those who have requirements to
publish.
Early in my career as a research scientist, I read the book "How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper," by Robert A. Day. In it, Dr. Day gives a step-by-step process for developing and writing a scienitific paper. A couple of paragraphs in his book made a deep impression on me. Here are two of the many excellent points about publishing that are included in his book.
"Although the ultimate goal of scientific research is publication, it has always been amazing to me that so many scientists neglect the responsibilities involved. A scientist will spend months or years of hard work to secure data, and then unconcernedly let much of their value be lost because of lack of interest in the communication process. The same scientist who will overcome tremendous obstacles to carry out a measurement to the fourth decimal place will be in deep slumber while a secretary is casually changing micrograms per milliliter to milligrams per milliliter and while the printer slips in an occasional pounds per barrel."
Dr. Day's final paragraph in his book states:
"What I have said in this book is this: Scientific research is not complete until the results have been published. Therefore, a scientific paper is an essential part of the research process. Therefore, the writing of an accurate, understandable paper is just as important as the research itself. Therefore, the words in the paper should be weighed as carefully as the reagents in the laboratory. Therefore, the scientist must know how to use words. Therefore, the education of a scientist is not complete until the ability to publish has been established."
Several years ago, my sister finished a graduate program in social work. She asked me to read her thesis and make comments. I agreed to look at it, even though I was not familiar with the literature in her discipline. I figured I could read the introduction, literature review, objectives, materials and methods, and look at the data to see whether appropriate interpretations and conclusions were made. In general, her thesis results were based on a collection of interviews she had conducted. The data for her thesis consisted of the answers to questions during these interviews, and the answers were analyzed and interpreted. I read her thesis with interest and found the introduction, materials and methods, and results to be well-written.
I was surprised, however, by her stating in the introduction that no research had been done on her subject. After reading the thesis, I wrote to her the following:
"You state that not much work has been done on... (her subject). I find this hard to believe since... (with some explanation of why I felt it was hard to believe). But assuming you are correct and not much work has been done on your subject, then you should have a very easy time of publishing your work in leading journals of your discipline. If the objectives of your research are stated correctly to answer real questions and your research methods are sound, the results should be reported. If you have not entertained the thought of publishing or you have not been pushed to publish your work, then you should give serious consideration to submitting your work to a journal."
It then occurred to me that my sister was unaware of philosophies like Dr. Day's, where the research is not finished until the results are reported in a publication. So it caused me to reflect on the reasons why research scientists do not publish their work.
Reasons for Perishing
In my experience, scientists do not publish for several reasons.
1. They do no research worthy of publishing.
There can be many reasons for this. One reason may be that the research is a rehash of other work that has gone on in the discipline. The researchers are not acquainted with the literature in their field so they come up with new ideas (to them) but do not realize that the same kind of work and ideas have already been researched and reported. No journal will accept work that does not contribute to the body of scientific knowledge in that discipline. No new questions were generated and therefore no new findings were obtained.
One of the great advantages of attending conferences, symposiums, and other meetings in a person's discipline is finding out what others are doing and what they are discovering. If persons unfamiliar with the scientific literature try to publish their work, they find that the reviewers (usually people who are experts in their fields and acquainted with the body of knowledge in a subject area) reject their work or require great amounts of revision to be done to coincide with the body of knowledge already done. If the person submitting the work does not take negative comments personally and is willing to put forth the effort in revising the manuscript, the paper may be published based on reviewer comments, if it contains some new information or recognizes and confirms previous work.
2. They are too busy to publish.
Sometimes people say they are too busy to write publications. Their schedules do not allow them the time to prepare manuscripts from their student's thesis or from other research they conduct, or it will take them too much time to fix the problems in the data. It requires too much work. Little (or big) mistakes or problems with the data sometimes make the preparation process cumbersome, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. Recalculation of data, redoing the statistics, and developing different conclusions based on the new data is sometimes overwhelming. It just simply takes too long and takes too much energy, and we are all too busy to do everything over again.
Publishing in journals is one of the hardest things to do for most faculty members and research scientists. Research papers have no deadlines as to when they should be submitted to journals and can be sent to the journal editor at any time. Unlike teaching or other meeting-driven schedules where you must show up at a specified time, journal articles must be initiated by the author of the paper. Since most people are not self-starting or cannot initiate things on their own, publishing is very hard for most researchers. People are just too lazy to put forth the effort or cannot afford the time to devote to a writing project.
3. Some scientists are too critical of their own work.
Some people are actually too picky and critical of their own work. I have known several scientists that expected their research paper to be perfect before submitting it to a journal. While this is an admirable goal, the consequence of this high expectation is that the scientist cannot ever seem to get the paper ready to send to the journal for review. The data are not quite right or good enough, and the scientist always seems to need more data. People in this category conduct excellent research and normally have great data, but they still think someone may find a little problem with their work or be critical of the data, its analyses or interpretation.
4. Some scientists cannot take criticism.
In connection with being too critical of their own work, some scientists are petrified of reviewer comments and criticism. They suspect that some potential reviewer, after reading the paper, may think less of them because of their research methods or interpretation, which may jeopardize the author's reputation. On the other hand, some scientists feel that their work and results are the definitive work on the subject. The researchers feel that any adverse comment by a reviewer obviously shows the reviewer's ignorance and his inability to recognize groundbreaking discoveries. The authors cannot bear scrutiny.
5. All reasons cannot be categorized, but many are simply excuses for not publishing.
There are other miscellaneous reasons for people not publishing, which tend to be excuses rather than actual reasons. They may be cynical of certain journal editors, saying that this journal only publishes work by these institutions or researchers, so they give up after one rejection. Another problem with some scientists is that they cannot organize the data into a publishable unit. They feel all the data are important and none can be eliminated. Sometimes they cannot step back far enough from the data to see which values are important and which are irrelevant.
Others complain that they have no research money or they have no technical support (including manpower or equipment). Some scientists, after discovering the answer to a question for themselves, lose interest in the research and are unconcerned about making others aware of their findings through publication. Once in a while, someone will say their work is confidential and releasing the information would infringe upon the agreement they have with a funding agency or company. "The patent is pending," and they must therefore hold back on publishing the information. While this is a legitimate excuse for the short term, often the researchers have lost interest in publishing the information after the patent is finally granted.
Another reason is that the scientists are uncomfortable with the data. The data do not fit what one would expect and the researchers cannot determine the reason. I have old theses from graduated students which sit on my shelf. The theses contain data that I should dust off and try to get published. But the data are confusing and I cannot explain them to my satisfaction. So the thesis sits in my office and I feel guilty for not doing something with it.
Perhaps to alleviate this guilt, I could share the conflicting data with a colleague or another researcher not acquainted with the study. As such, maybe they could make sense of it, give suggestions, or find missing elements in the data. I have done this a few times by sharing this data with a colleague unconnected to the research and asking him to look at it. His perspective was fresh and he saw the important information that the data contained. He helped me to eliminate the superfluous numbers and concentrate on the real story.
Some Final Comments
For students conducting graduate work, it is imperative that they understand their work must result in a journal article. Students should ask themselves (and perhaps their advisors) some of the following questions early in their graduate programs.
I realize most graduate students obtain great experience during their graduate program, and sometimes the data collection and analysis are very significant parts of a student's instruction. Sometimes the work is not published because mistakes were made by the student during the data collection process or improper treatments were used. Yet the student writes a thesis and obtains a degree. However, advisors should help students avoid the major mistakes that might negate the study for publication while still allowing the student to learn by their own mistakes. This is a fine balance. The advisor must help the student develop a well-defined, researchable topic, worthy of publication.
I also hasten to add that many research scientists publish regularly and, as a result, are well-known in their respective disciplines. So, it is clear that they do understand this basic philosophy on research and publishing: if the work is not published, then it was not done. When unpublished, the research goes unnoticed, there is no definite result of the work (a thesis is not an adequate final publication product), the data from the work are only found in the library of the institution where it was done, and the research is hard to reference and obtain. So, the research is nearly nonexistent and may as well not have been done. Granting agencies are pleased to give financial support to scientists who publish, and they are happy to see that their funds resulted in work reported in refereed journal articles.
The proof of good research is a resulting publication in a leading journal.
So, why aren't you publishing your work?
Acknowledgments
Special thanks are extended to Dr. John Sencindiver of West Virginia University for reviewing several versions of this article. I also give credit to my M.S. graduate advisor, Dr. Jack Brotherson of Brigham Young University, for helping me understand that behind every good data set is a story worthy of publishing.
References
Day, R.A. 1982. How to write and publish a scientific paper. Second Edition. ISI Press, Philadelphia, PA.
