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| The Rat, 2013 |
This post is about high impact factor journals, i.e., those
publications where you have to convince an entity called “editor” that your
article is “cool” and will “appeal to a wide audience” before having a chance
to get it reviewed by someone who's not an ignorant. Most of you won’t pass this first filter. That is, unless an individual whom I've never seen in any nonlocality workshop claims in Nature News that your result is “the most important general theorem relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics since Bell’s theorem”.
Hence I will focus my rant on this aspect, the editor stage,
because I find astounding that editors of professional scientific journals regularly
reject submissions on completely unscientific grounds. Whenever I get a good
original result and am able to summarize it in four pages, I know that I will
probably get it published in PRL. I wished I could say that whenever I get an exceptional result it will most likely be
published in Science, Nature or Nature Physics. If that were the case, I
wouldn’t be writing this post.
What’s wrong with high impact factor journals? Is it true
that under their human masks Nature editors are a reptilian species
sent to destroy Earthen civilization by featuring articles like this? Desperate
for answers, I went to the Bristol University Mensa and asked researchers on this matter. I
found that their opinions fall into three categories:
a) The Conformist: “Yes, sure, the system is far from
perfect, but that’s all there is. So stop whining and send those families to
the reeducation cam- sorry, wrong forum.”
b) The Outraged Conformist: “Those journals are a shame and
we should boycott them all. But first let me submit my new paper “If quantum
mechanics were more nonlocal, an avian compass would violate the second law of
thermodynamics in the Canary Islands””.
c) The Understanding: “You have to put yourself in their
shoes… these editors receive a lot of papers every week, they have to come up
with a system to release that load. And the simplest way is to reject all
papers written by junior scientists. Now I have to leave you, that man with the
scars over there says that he wants my “fucking” shirt. Poor soul, he must have
suffered so much. I will offer him my money, my house and my first-born baby”.
Between the lines, one can read some skepticism about the transparency of editorial decisions in high impact factor journals. Let us dig into
this:
In his book “Reason strangled”, chemist and
journalist Carlos Elías argues that Nature’s top-one priority is to maintain
its impact factor; that allows the journal to set the prize of the publication.
Problem is, Nature’s impact factor is already so high that a lot of effort must
go just into not letting it drop. Hence Nature editors have to make sure that
each article will be highly cited. Articles signed by famous scientists are
read more, and, consequently, have more citations. Likewise with prestigious
affiliations, fancy titles, articles already mentioned in the press. Elías
writes about Nature, but I guess that his conclusions apply to other high
impact factor journals as well.
It follows that the paper “Full algorithmic characterization
of LOCC quantum operations”, by John Unknown, from Mac&Cheese Community
College, will have a cold reception. On the other hand, the article “Quantum mechanics
is extra-spicy”, signed by Stephen Hawking, Edward Witten and David Bowie, and
featured on TV by Beakman and the Myth Busters, will make the same Nature
editors twist and shout. Don’t forget that we’re speaking of a journal that in
1996 published an article about the analgesic effects of myrrh. Because
it was a relevant result in the field? No! Because it was Christmas time!
The need to increase the journal’s impact factor explains
many things, but does not answer all my questions. How come that exactly the
same document is called “Supplementary Material” in Science, “Supplementary
Information” in Nature, “Supplemental Information” in PNAS and “Supplemental
Material” in PRL*? Do they want to drive us crazy? Why can’t PNAS
editors read a reference where the author’s initials are - sacrilege! - before the family name? Are they aware
of the amount of time that it takes to submit a paper to this journal, only to
see it rejected the next week? If I conduct the research, write a referee list
and prepare the paper in their damned
unique format, what do the so-called editors do? I mean, besides checking my affiliation and h-index and
replying “we receive more papers than we can publish, so we have to select
those that will be of the greatest interest to a wide audience”. Do they
understand how that sentence feels like when the next day they publish whatever crap with the words “spooky” and “quantum” in the abstract? Come to think of it, why do high
impact factor journals have an impact factor at all? Shouldn’t they be in the
same lot as other popular science magazines, like Scientific American, New Scientist and Physical
Review A**?
*I know, PRL is not a high impact factor journal. But it’s
where most good Physics papers end up after being rejected by the first three,
they should make the transition easier!
**OK, here I went too far.
**OK, here I went too far.
Epilogue
When I was a young postdoc, within two months, two different
groups proposed two physical principles to limit quantum nonlocality. One group
included important figures in QI who had previously published in Nature. Even
unpublished, their work was soon echoed in the press (what? You never heard of
information causality? How long did you say you stayed in that coma?). The other group was
composed by a relatively unknown postdoc (me) and a second-year PhD student.
My collaborator and I knew that nothing short of building a
time machine would have allowed us to pass the editors of a high impact factor
journal. However, when we heard that the first group had managed to get their
paper accepted in Nature, we thought: “now we have them by the balls”.
On one hand, Nature editors could not claim that our work
wasn’t of general interest, because the same considerations would apply to
information causality. On the other hand, they couldn’t argue that our work
didn’t represent a significant advance, because it advanced the field as much
as information causality did. In sum, the two main arguments for rejection in
Nature didn’t apply. Cowabunga!
Of course, we were assuming that Nature editors can feel
human emotions, like shame. Our article never went to referees. Guess why?
Because “it was not of general interest and did not represent a significant advance”.
A prior submission to Nature Physics had had exactly the same response.
Outraged, I wrote to Nature’s Editor-in-Chief, explaining my case*. My letter ended with some recommendations for the journal:
[…]
I therefore suggest
you to change the contents of the Nature webpage concerning how to get
published. It will not be so glamorous, but at least it will be honest. It
could start by:
1. It is completely
admissible to exaggerate one’s work to the point that no future research can
compete with your so-claimed results.
2. If you are not a
key figure in your field, stop reading. We are currently working on a webpage
that can only be accessed by scientific celebrities, but, meanwhile, we would
appreciate your cooperation if… wait a moment! Why am I wasting time talking to
a Nobody? Leave! Now!
3. Oh, it’s you again!
Didn’t I tell you to come back when you are famous? Go away, your anonymity
smell is making me dizzy… what? How can you become famous? Err… I don’t know…
By publishing in Nature?
4. Even if your work
is not good enough for Nature, you can still try with Nature Physics. There, an editor with a PhD in experimental ultraviolet LEDs will review your
theoretical paper on Foundational Physics and copy-paste his opinion about it.
In order to guarantee a polite response, we have removed the exclamation sign
from his keyboard.
[…]
And so on. That way,
people will not get the wrong impression that Nature is a scientific journal,
but the nerdy version of “Hello!”.
I think I have already
written enough, and I do not want to waste more of your precious time; you must
be very busy eating young researchers. But do not worry, this is not a “see you
soon”, it is more a “see you never”.
A rat had been born.
Yours truly,
The Rat
