Chapter 3. DIY Scientific Publishing
Publishing for the Hacker/Tinkerer and the R01-Funded Scientist
To publish is to make something known or to disseminate it to the public. With the advent of the Internet, publishing has become very easy to do. Nowadays, anyone can set up a website or blog and publish their work and ideas immediately and freely. Indeed, literally millions of people and organizations do just that every day and every hour. The ability to publish so easily, coupled with the ability to disseminate publications through various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, means that you can write something on your couch and a few hours later have it be seen by millions of people. This may not be easy, but it is certainly possible. Because of this, the publishing industry has dramatically changed over recent years. Indeed, we are in a time when there are more independent publishers (bloggers) than there are publishing organizations. What can publishers offer writers that they can’t really do themselves? Not much, and because of this, publishing, in short, has for the most part become do-it-yourself, except in science. Why?
In science, publishing is anything but simple. Words like “preprint,” “impact factor,” and “peer review” are all influential terms that affect the dissemination and readership in one way or another. For example, you can publish something as a “preprint,” but that’s not considered a “publication” by scientists because it has ...
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