Almost nobody searches academic databases, even academics and researchers mostly use normal Google search when researching things.
As an academic and researcher, I don’t agree with this. I will use regular google or wikipedia if I want the basics of a subject, or am researching something that has no related academic field. If I want high quality research on an established field, I will use google scholar, and from there, look through the citations of relevant papers to find other relevant research.
The vast majority of academic contributions get read by approximately no one. The average high-effort LessWrong post or EA Forum post likely gets an order of magnitude more readers than they would if the same effort were put into an academic paper.
This is the wrong comparison. The counterfactual case here is not “write an academic paper and don’t tell anyone about it”, it’s “write an academic paper, then link it on lesswrong/EAforum”. In the latter case, you get both general public reads and academic searchability.
The other point is that we don’t care about every read equally. If you can get the worlds leading expert in a subject to engage with your research, the result will be orders of magnitude more productive in terms of feedback and future research than the average Lesswrong user who doesn’t really understand what you’re talking about. Very, very few subjects have their leading experts reading this forum.
As an academic and researcher, I don’t agree with this. I will use regular google or wikipedia if I want the basics of a subject, or am researching something that has no related academic field.
Yep, agree that if you are writing things that could straightforwardly fit into an academic field, publication is often pretty decent (though I still expect that people will find the average engagement their paper gets to be highly disappointing, given the levels of effort involved).
My sense is only a very small minority of work on the EA Forum or LessWrong would straightforwardly fit into an existing scientific field.
The counterfactual case here is not “write an academic paper and don’t tell anyone about it”, it’s “write an academic paper, then link it on lesswrong/EAforum”. In the latter case, you get both general public reads and academic searchability.
I agree this helps a bit, though also beware that link posts, especially to long pdfs with bad readability on mobile also tend to lose about 80% of their readership on LW and the EA Forum.
Yeah, I agree with these points. To me the best practice would be:
If the research doesn’t really fit within an established field or journal, write it up as a post.
If the research does fit, do a cost benefit analysis on whether it’s worth the extra effort to make it publication worthy. Remember that the benefits aren’t just in terms of academic readership: the process of making it publication worthy may allow you to spot mistakes or shortcomings, which are also valuable.
If you do try and publish, put it on Arxiv or equivalent and link it on the forum, ideally with a good, readable summary of the findings.
As an academic and researcher, I don’t agree with this. I will use regular google or wikipedia if I want the basics of a subject, or am researching something that has no related academic field. If I want high quality research on an established field, I will use google scholar, and from there, look through the citations of relevant papers to find other relevant research.
This is the wrong comparison. The counterfactual case here is not “write an academic paper and don’t tell anyone about it”, it’s “write an academic paper, then link it on lesswrong/EAforum”. In the latter case, you get both general public reads and academic searchability.
The other point is that we don’t care about every read equally. If you can get the worlds leading expert in a subject to engage with your research, the result will be orders of magnitude more productive in terms of feedback and future research than the average Lesswrong user who doesn’t really understand what you’re talking about. Very, very few subjects have their leading experts reading this forum.
Yep, agree that if you are writing things that could straightforwardly fit into an academic field, publication is often pretty decent (though I still expect that people will find the average engagement their paper gets to be highly disappointing, given the levels of effort involved).
My sense is only a very small minority of work on the EA Forum or LessWrong would straightforwardly fit into an existing scientific field.
I agree this helps a bit, though also beware that link posts, especially to long pdfs with bad readability on mobile also tend to lose about 80% of their readership on LW and the EA Forum.
Yeah, I agree with these points. To me the best practice would be:
If the research doesn’t really fit within an established field or journal, write it up as a post.
If the research does fit, do a cost benefit analysis on whether it’s worth the extra effort to make it publication worthy. Remember that the benefits aren’t just in terms of academic readership: the process of making it publication worthy may allow you to spot mistakes or shortcomings, which are also valuable.
If you do try and publish, put it on Arxiv or equivalent and link it on the forum, ideally with a good, readable summary of the findings.