Academia has benefits, but reaching a larger audience is not one of them, as far as I can tell (there are of course exceptions and some publications are much better suited for being published in a journal than a blogpost, but by and large academia does not have a good way of actually driving readership).
I agree that most academic research is a bad ROI but I find that a lot of this sort of ‘nobody reads research’ commentary is equating reads with citations which seems completely wrong. By that metric most forum posts would also not be read by anyone.
I do think it is somewhat fair to say that you will miss out on audiences if you only post on a forum because a forum post probably won’t reach certain audiences.
Almost nobody searches academic databases, even academics and researchers mostly use normal Google search when researching things.
This has not been my experience as an academic. For several years my job was to trying to find and synthesise evidence for industry/​government decision makers. Those reports involved searching academic databases and largely omitted unpublished literature and never included any forum posts, as far as I recall. I think that this was also true of my colleagues.
Literature reviews are also published and read a lot and these usually do not include unpublished work.
I think we should maybe consider doing some research to test the reach and credibility of different communication modalities to have a better sense of when they are worthwhile. For instance, an experiment to test if people (ideally policymakers or similar demographics) differ greatly in their assessments of content in different formats (e.g., preprint v forum post). Or to see where key decision makers get their information from and what they trust.
Otherwise, we run the risk that a lot of very detailed and helpful content on places like LW and EAF is largely overlooked by people outside those communities, including many important decision makers.
I agree that most academic research is a bad ROI but I find that a lot of this sort of ‘nobody reads research’ commentary is equating reads with citations which seems completely wrong. By that metric most forum posts would also not be read by anyone.
I agree-for one, the studies I’ve seen saying that the median publication is not cited are including conference papers, so if one is talking about the peer-reviewed literature, citations are significantly greater. I’ve estimated the average number of citations per paper is around 30 for the peer-reviewed literature. Furthermore, from what I’ve seen, the number of reads on places like ResearchGate and Academia.edu tend to be one to two orders of magnitude greater than the number of citations. So I think a reasonable expectation for a peer-reviewed paper is hundreds or thousands of reads.
The academic publishing system is deeply flawed and we need to push for change from an EA standpoint.
As of now, we are losing thousands upon thousands of top-grade, peer-reviewed research articles that are stuck in obscure journals or self-published and read by nobody. This is due to the high cost of translation, publication, and open access fees, which are particularly prohibitive for researchers in the third world. We simply can’t afford to publish in high-impact journals unless we do self-funding or beg for foreign funds.
I believe the EA community has compassion for the injustice in the world, and I believe that we can be the push for that societal change. We need to prioritize knowledge and information above the corporate greed of publishers.
I completely agree that academic publishing is completely flawed and incentives are a mess. However, anyone that has actually sought to improve upon that must confess that changing this is difficult and will take time. I think it is an important cause.
Not publishing in academic fashion is not a viable or even working solution to the problem of academic publishing.
I understand, It’s a huge task to replace the 150 year systems set in place, we can’t do it overnight, but I do believe that not enough academics talk about it. I am not sure why.
I agree with you on the second point too, I have never source-cited anything that wasn’t peer reviewed and published in a journal, I know other academics will agree. I was just giving a perspective on why academic writers in general might go through the alternative routes of publishing.
I agree that most academic research is a bad ROI but I find that a lot of this sort of ‘nobody reads research’ commentary is equating reads with citations which seems completely wrong. By that metric most forum posts would also not be read by anyone.
I do think it is somewhat fair to say that you will miss out on audiences if you only post on a forum because a forum post probably won’t reach certain audiences.
This has not been my experience as an academic. For several years my job was to trying to find and synthesise evidence for industry/​government decision makers. Those reports involved searching academic databases and largely omitted unpublished literature and never included any forum posts, as far as I recall. I think that this was also true of my colleagues.
Literature reviews are also published and read a lot and these usually do not include unpublished work.
I think we should maybe consider doing some research to test the reach and credibility of different communication modalities to have a better sense of when they are worthwhile. For instance, an experiment to test if people (ideally policymakers or similar demographics) differ greatly in their assessments of content in different formats (e.g., preprint v forum post). Or to see where key decision makers get their information from and what they trust.
Otherwise, we run the risk that a lot of very detailed and helpful content on places like LW and EAF is largely overlooked by people outside those communities, including many important decision makers.
I agree-for one, the studies I’ve seen saying that the median publication is not cited are including conference papers, so if one is talking about the peer-reviewed literature, citations are significantly greater. I’ve estimated the average number of citations per paper is around 30 for the peer-reviewed literature. Furthermore, from what I’ve seen, the number of reads on places like ResearchGate and Academia.edu tend to be one to two orders of magnitude greater than the number of citations. So I think a reasonable expectation for a peer-reviewed paper is hundreds or thousands of reads.
The academic publishing system is deeply flawed and we need to push for change from an EA standpoint.
As of now, we are losing thousands upon thousands of top-grade, peer-reviewed research articles that are stuck in obscure journals or self-published and read by nobody. This is due to the high cost of translation, publication, and open access fees, which are particularly prohibitive for researchers in the third world. We simply can’t afford to publish in high-impact journals unless we do self-funding or beg for foreign funds.
I believe the EA community has compassion for the injustice in the world, and I believe that we can be the push for that societal change. We need to prioritize knowledge and information above the corporate greed of publishers.
I completely agree that academic publishing is completely flawed and incentives are a mess. However, anyone that has actually sought to improve upon that must confess that changing this is difficult and will take time. I think it is an important cause.
Not publishing in academic fashion is not a viable or even working solution to the problem of academic publishing.
I understand, It’s a huge task to replace the 150 year systems set in place, we can’t do it overnight, but I do believe that not enough academics talk about it. I am not sure why.
I agree with you on the second point too, I have never source-cited anything that wasn’t peer reviewed and published in a journal, I know other academics will agree. I was just giving a perspective on why academic writers in general might go through the alternative routes of publishing.
Just saw this from @soroushjp—it seems very relevant.