Tuesday, February 28, 2012

So many journals...

Seriously, why are there so many medical journals?

Whenever I have to do any research, I access the ejournals at our local university medical library, and I'm always shocked at how many journals there are.

Like just starting with the letter J, there are almost 1500 journals.

Not 1500 pages, not 1500 articles, 1500 journals. Many of which have been around for decades, publishing volumes either quarterly, monthly, or even weekly.

Who's writing all these articles??

Having attempted to do research in the past, I know firsthand how difficult it is, how many steps and barriers there are. So it amazes me that there are enough research studies going on to fill 1500 journals. And that's just the ones starting the J! (Granted, J is a popular letter for a Journal.)

5 comments:

  1. All those journals, and it's still terribly difficult to get your research published in a decent one. I'm on journal#3 for my PhD work. And our careers are ruled by impact factors.

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  2. Because there are so many crappy journals out there that are willing to publish crappy research. And they get money from advertisement, too. It's big business, since they know we're all desperate to publish :(

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  3. Yeah, exactly. I've been trying to publish my articles for a while now, and only one was accepted (and still on the accepted waiting list), so I really don't know who's out there hogging all the journals

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  4. I think most of them exist to publish bullshit and sell ad space.

    Of course, some may feel the same way about my blog, so who am I to talk?

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  5. Here is why, publish or perish http://is.gd/yJqmj6

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