What is the scope for the contents in EarthArXiv
Bruce Caron
Public
Seen by 110
Question: Should EarthArXiv accept papers that are interesting for the Earth sciences but are non-standard in the sense that they may not be “preprints” as they are not really designed to be submitted later as science artifacts (although they might get published as a part of the editorial side of a science journal)? For example: aspirational essays on how changes to standard work flows might lead to new discoveries, critiques of how Earth data formats are sharable, theoretical essays on meta-science issues such as the impact of open science practices for Earth science.
EarthArXiv could be a great home for these. But does their inclusion affect how the archive is perceived as a place where “real science” is found?
Myself, I think the perception issue is misplaced. In my view, the service is designed to hold and expose (through search) all content that might be of value for the Earth (and Space) sciences. Nobody is reading the archive as a journal. Since we don’t have a paper product, we don’t need to be careful about the amount of content that gets included.
Perhaps EarthArXiv can be a leader in opening up the notion of “publication” as a first-step, and not a final step in research, and can be a home for content that might be excluded from existing forms of science journals.
What are your thoughts?
Victor Venema Wed 30 May 2018 9:13PM
Is there a clear way to differentiate between commentaries and opinions and review articles, except for the quality, which we do not assess?
Jamie Farquharson Wed 27 Jun 2018 8:45PM
I suppose a review article should account for distinct viewpoints, which opinion pieces rarely do (i.e. they are proponents of a sole viewpoint)
Han Geurdes Wed 30 May 2018 6:25PM
Dear Bruce,
Why do you ask a question like this one while you know, at the same time, that there is no room for vetting out the "non science" submissions ? I simply didn't think about the time needed to moderate the contribution to EA, when I tried to formulate my point. To be sure. Did I got your subsequent messages right about moderation etc?
It makes sense, in second thoughts, to refer non scientific papers to other sites. At the same time I believe that it can be worthwhile to try a more integrated view as well. But that, in turn, will be a scientific paper if it is to be on the EA. Right?
I think that I have a lot of other things on my mind, like getting customers for my software, that require more urgent attention.
I wish you success with managing the EA.
Dr. Han Geurdes
Geurdes data science kvk64522202
Member of the UNGGIM Private Sector Network.
...................
Read my Clay millennium problem Navier Stokes solution:
Cogent Mathematics
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311835.2017.1284293
http://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05113
Read our solution of Bells theorem at:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1704.00005
Read our relativistic quantum theory paper
10.1016/j.hedp.2017.12.004
Bruce Caron Wed 30 May 2018 7:23PM
Hi Han,
I do think we need to consider how EarthArXiv can handle contents that are not limited to the historical constraints that print journals had... so I believe the conversation is worthwhile. Discussions in the formation of EA included wanting to "disrupt" the current publishing constraints. It only occurred to me after my question that this would also add to the labor of the group vetting content. And, as Stephanie has reminded me, the Executive Council already has a position on this. This discussion has surfaced the idea of using some way of tagging non-traditional submissions. This notion may inform a solution in the future. cheers!
Christopher Jackson Wed 30 May 2018 7:58PM
Interesting proposal. I guess people are still happy to cite ‘pers. comm.’ in their work in support of a statement. Why not an essay? Having said that, I hate and never cite ‘pers. comm.’, and always ask authors to remove them when reviewing. It could literally be, and typically is, reflective of a comment someone once made to someone in a bar...
Han Geurdes Wed 30 May 2018 8:02PM
Thanks Bruce.
Sorry, I was tired and somewhat grumpy. Sorry again...
Dr. Han Geurdes
Geurdes data science kvk64522202
Member of the UNGGIM Private Sector Network.
...................
Read my Clay millennium problem Navier Stokes solution:
Cogent Mathematics
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311835.2017.1284293
http://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05113
Read our solution of Bells theorem at:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1704.00005
Read our relativistic quantum theory paper
10.1016/j.hedp.2017.12.004
Anson Thu 31 May 2018 7:04AM
I kind of like this idea, in terms of widening out the scope - there are many editorials or opinion pieces that are short, but useful but all too often pay-walled themselves. But I totally appreciate the amount of extra work that might come with pre-screening processes. Also, an interesting discussion could even bring people to EA who might not otherwise have considered using the site.
The idea was mentioned about tagging such pieces so that they were identifiably different from more conventional research pieces, which is good.
Another idea might be to, in the future, host an accompanying blog alongside EA, where opinion pieces can be posted, reviews of recent pre/post prints can be made etc. The example I was thinking about was http://www.realclimate.org/ but I didn't know if such a resource existed for the Earth Scientists.
Victor Venema Sat 2 Jun 2018 3:58PM
For me the additional work for handling more informal contributions is not a particularly good argument. If EarthArXiv becomes a success and most of the Earth Science manuscripts are uploaded here we would have magnitudes more work, we can handle a few percent informal contributions more. At the moment the onboarding is done by Chris and apparently it is not worth the trouble of setting up a formal system with clear criteria and a group where experts in the field judge the manuscripts. (I would be happy to do (observational) climatology.)
RealClimate is a really good blog and worth mimicking in other Earth sciences. If we can somehow stimulate that that would be valuable. I am not sure whether we should do that under the brand of EarthArXiv.
Due to the comment of @sgirardclos I (re)discovered that we have a homepage (with terms and references), including an empty blog.
https://eartharxiv.github.io/index.html
The current first page of EarthArXiv is not a good entry point for new people, it does not explain anything. https://eartharxiv.org/
The EarthArXiv page should prominently link to our Github page and the link from Github to the ArXiv could also be more prominent.
Even better would be to merge the two pages: the Earth ArXiv search box put on the first page of our Github homepage and that merged page could be hosted at EarthArXiv.org. A ticker with new articles on the first page would be wonderful to demonstrate that we are alive.
It would be good to use the blog on our homepage for communication with our users. This channel is not the best way for that, too much detail and more complicated to reply.
Dasapta Erwin Irawan Sat 2 Jun 2018 11:57PM
Hi all. In the following notes, we suggest our users to host their research files and related materials in OSF repository. If they have a draft of manuscript as a result, they could upload the file to the repository and connect it as a preprint to their choice of preprint server. If the server is not OSF preprint family, then they should put the link back to the original repository to direct readers to the original data and supporting materials.
Stéphanie Girardclos · Wed 30 May 2018 4:33PM
I think this (i.e. posting work on Figshare to get a formatted citation and a DOI)for blog-related content is an excellent suggestion!
If we all agree, I suggest that we complete the 'EarthArXiv Moderation and Terms of Use' (https://eartharxiv.github.io/moderation.html) under the "What does EarthArXiv not accept?"
"- Commentaries and opinion pieces (see Figshare as an alternative)