The Nonlinear Library EA - How to publish research in peer-reviewed journals by Ren Springlea
Nov 23, 2023
42:18
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How to publish research in peer-reviewed journals, published by Ren Springlea on November 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This is a guide to publishing research in peer-reviewed journals, particularly for people in the EA community who might be keen to publish research but haven't done so before.
About this article:
This guide is aimed at people who know how to conduct research but are new to publishing in peer-reviewed journals. I've had a few people ask me about this, so I thought I'd compile all of my knowledge in this article.
I assume that the audience of this article already: know what academic research is; know how to conduct academic research (e.g. at the level of a Masters degree or perhaps a research-focused Bachelors degree); have a basic grasp of what a journal is; and have the skills to read scientific publications.
This article is based on my own views and my own experiences in academic publishing. I expect that there will be many academics who have a different view or a different strategy. My own experiences come from publishing in ecology, economics, agriculture/fisheries, psychology, and science communication.
Should you publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal?
Advantages of publishing in peer-reviewed journals
Publication in a journal can make your research appear more credible. This won't always matter, but my colleagues and I have encountered a few instances during animal advocacy where stakeholders (e.g. food retail companies, government policymakers) find research more compelling if it is published in a journal.
Publication in a journal can make you appear more credible. This is particularly true in non-EA circles, like if you want to apply for research jobs or funding from outside of the EA community.
Key ideas can be more easily noticed and adopted by other academics, and perhaps other stakeholders like government policymakers. I don't know how influential this effect is.
Your research can be more easily criticised by academics. This can provide an important voice of critique from experts outside of the EA community, which could be one way to detect if a piece of research is flawed in some way. This is my motivation for publishing a study I conducted where I used an economic model to estimate the impact of slow-growing broilers on aggregate animal welfare - submitting a paper like this for peer review is a great way to get feedback from experts in that specific branch of economics.
Drawbacks of publishing in peer-reviewed journals
Publications are not impact. Publishing your work is a tool that can sometimes help you to achieve impact. If we're trying to do the most good in the world, that may sometimes involve publishing peer-reviewed research (see above). In other cases, it'll be better to spend that time on more impactful work.
Not all research is suitable for peer-reviewed journals. For example, in the EA community, it is common to conduct prioritisation research to determine the most promising interventions or strategies, like
our recent work on fish advocacy in Denmark. That fish advocacy report would only be interesting to advocacy organisations and doesn't contribute any new understanding of reality beyond the strategy of one organisation, so it is probably not be publishable in a journal (though a smaller version focused on the Appendix of that report may be publishable).
Publishing in peer-reviewed journals costs time and energy. When I publish in a peer-reviewed journal (compared to when I publish a report on my organisation's website), I usually spend a couple of extra days writing the draft, and then a few extra days addressing peer review comments over the following months.
Peer-reviewed papers have significantly longer timelines. After the first draft of a manuscript is done, it might take 6 or 12 months or even l...
This is a guide to publishing research in peer-reviewed journals, particularly for people in the EA community who might be keen to publish research but haven't done so before.
About this article:
This guide is aimed at people who know how to conduct research but are new to publishing in peer-reviewed journals. I've had a few people ask me about this, so I thought I'd compile all of my knowledge in this article.
I assume that the audience of this article already: know what academic research is; know how to conduct academic research (e.g. at the level of a Masters degree or perhaps a research-focused Bachelors degree); have a basic grasp of what a journal is; and have the skills to read scientific publications.
This article is based on my own views and my own experiences in academic publishing. I expect that there will be many academics who have a different view or a different strategy. My own experiences come from publishing in ecology, economics, agriculture/fisheries, psychology, and science communication.
Should you publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal?
Advantages of publishing in peer-reviewed journals
Publication in a journal can make your research appear more credible. This won't always matter, but my colleagues and I have encountered a few instances during animal advocacy where stakeholders (e.g. food retail companies, government policymakers) find research more compelling if it is published in a journal.
Publication in a journal can make you appear more credible. This is particularly true in non-EA circles, like if you want to apply for research jobs or funding from outside of the EA community.
Key ideas can be more easily noticed and adopted by other academics, and perhaps other stakeholders like government policymakers. I don't know how influential this effect is.
Your research can be more easily criticised by academics. This can provide an important voice of critique from experts outside of the EA community, which could be one way to detect if a piece of research is flawed in some way. This is my motivation for publishing a study I conducted where I used an economic model to estimate the impact of slow-growing broilers on aggregate animal welfare - submitting a paper like this for peer review is a great way to get feedback from experts in that specific branch of economics.
Drawbacks of publishing in peer-reviewed journals
Publications are not impact. Publishing your work is a tool that can sometimes help you to achieve impact. If we're trying to do the most good in the world, that may sometimes involve publishing peer-reviewed research (see above). In other cases, it'll be better to spend that time on more impactful work.
Not all research is suitable for peer-reviewed journals. For example, in the EA community, it is common to conduct prioritisation research to determine the most promising interventions or strategies, like
our recent work on fish advocacy in Denmark. That fish advocacy report would only be interesting to advocacy organisations and doesn't contribute any new understanding of reality beyond the strategy of one organisation, so it is probably not be publishable in a journal (though a smaller version focused on the Appendix of that report may be publishable).
Publishing in peer-reviewed journals costs time and energy. When I publish in a peer-reviewed journal (compared to when I publish a report on my organisation's website), I usually spend a couple of extra days writing the draft, and then a few extra days addressing peer review comments over the following months.
Peer-reviewed papers have significantly longer timelines. After the first draft of a manuscript is done, it might take 6 or 12 months or even l...