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We have hundreds of thousands of scholarly articles containing lab data and mathematical modeling results - published every year.

But what to do with a gray area in scientific research where there is no previous research? A conceptual brainstorming of topics outside of academia mainstream subjects should have some limited way of existence.

Tripartio
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TheMatrix Equation-balance
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    It would help if you proofed your sentences a bit. For example, "Not even budgets for lab testing." makes no sense to me where it appears, and your last sentence seems to me missing one or more words (e.g. maybe you intended to begin the last sentence with "What is" or "What are some"; or maybe the question mark was supposed to be a period). That said, this sounds like a question that has been asked here before, but I don't know of such a question at the moment. – Dave L Renfro Jul 04 '23 at 18:15
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    30,000 academic journals, and you can't find one that fits your subject? Then there are no readers for your subject. You might as well write it and read it yourself. – Cheery Jul 04 '23 at 18:33
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    You've tagged this question [tag:review-articles], so presumably there are some references you'd cite. Where are those published? Is it all "gray literature"? – Anyon Jul 04 '23 at 18:33
  • 4 journals did send my article for peer-review. That would indicate at least some interest from the editors. – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 04 '23 at 18:40
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    If journals are willing to send your work for peer review, it seems you don't need to find some unique venue: the editors are communicating that their venue is fine. But, your work isn't passing peer review. – Bryan Krause Jul 04 '23 at 21:38
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    I’m voting to close this question because your profile here suggests that this is the fourth question you have asked about what seems to be the same paper. – Ethan Bolker Jul 04 '23 at 21:52
  • @BryanKrauseisonstrike - This is not just me. Conceptual (to a degree) research papers are notoriously difficult to publish in scholarly journals. – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 04 '23 at 22:03
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    To publish you generally have to convince people your work is worth something. Yeah, if you just have a concept with no experiment or grounded theoretical work (eg: equations, simulations) then there's not much worth. Just because you put effort in doesn't mean it's worth anything. If your paper is going for peer review and then getting rejected, it's not that it appears poor on its face or by category, rather, it seems like it appears poor on deeper examination. You can look for crank or vanity venues, or you can improve your paper. Did you get comments from the reviewers? – Bryan Krause Jul 04 '23 at 22:25
  • @BryanKrauseisonstrike - I would not start with the publishing process without strong encouragement. But almost all the reviews I've received are consistent. Reviewers are very shallow regarding the content itself. And almost all complain that some of the references point to 'non-scholarly articles'. – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 04 '23 at 22:39
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    Okay, so, fix it? It sounds like you need to expand your literature search to include scholarly articles in those areas. When you get peer review comments you should usually expect to make improvements before you submit again, even if that venue won't consider a resubmission. – Bryan Krause Jul 04 '23 at 22:48
  • @BryanKrauseisonstrike - when you write on a subject outside of academic research areas, you don't have scholarly articles to reference. – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 04 '23 at 22:52
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    What are you referencing instead? – Bryan Krause Jul 04 '23 at 23:14
  • Fore example: "Federal Aviation Administration" papers with technical specifications.

    Or "IAU Minor Planet Center"

     – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 04 '23 at 23:26
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    Government publishings seem sufficiently scholarly (maybe less so if they are just simplified content for consumption by the general public), are you sure those are the specific ones that drew the comments? – Bryan Krause Jul 05 '23 at 00:24

3 Answers3

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If you want existence of your work without peer review you can try arxiv. Some of the path breaking work only exist in arXiv.

Anuj
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gray area in scientific research where there is no previous research?

This is no gray area at all.

Either it is a scientific area, or it is not. If it is a new area, ideally, you would trigger discussion among people sharing the same research area, by hosting a workshop or at least a meeting, then you consider if someone would support you in starting a new journal.

Then if there is enough interest, you start publishing your own journal with a publisher, or on your own (see diamond open-source initiatives).

If there is not enough interest, you prepare a monography and you see how it goes in publishing (and reading it).

EarlGrey
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  • "Either it is a scientific area, or it is not." - The black and white approach is rarely intelligent. . – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 05 '23 at 12:07
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    You are interested in publishing something that can be expressed in scientific terms, or not. If you are interested in the scientific terms, the formal structure is rather easy, either you write a review paper of what is at least tangent to [insert your idea] or you do a preliminary lab study/prototype, do some statistical measure/feasibility study on it and publish this.

    Either you go the Wright brothers way, believing in your own idea and therefore putting your money and going after funds to make it real, or you go the research way, by writing a proposal to access research funds.

     – EarlGrey Jul 05 '23 at 12:30
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I think that if your paper is novel and based on sound reasoning and research (which usually means that it is supported by previous work and/or your own experiments) you should be able to publish it somewhere. So that's the best option. But, I would argue that "brainstorming" without any evidence is not really research. If that is what you are trying to publish, then you will be limited. arXiv might not event take that sort of thing (check out their moderation policy).

If you are trying to present scholarly work (especially without experimental evidence), you need scholarly sources as a foundation. If you present a hypothesis based on nothing (or worse bad/unreliable sources) then it will not stand up to scrutiny - which is what seems to be happening if you have received the same feedback multiple times.

I would suggest either

A) shoring up your hypothesis with background research or experiments and resubmitting to an appropriate journal

or

B) consider starting a blog that you can use to deposit (and develop) your ideas without the same scholarly expectations of a journal.

A side note, you should be honest with yourself about the viability of your hypothesis. Perhaps your topic is interesting but not well supported (I suspect this is the case if you have made it to reviewers multiple times). Or perhaps your topic is treading close to pseudoscience and your sources are just an easy excuse to reject. Either way, the solution is not necessarily to try to circumvent the normal publishing process. You should really try to properly support your ideas so they can be published.

sErISaNo
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  • "I would argue that "brainstorming" without any evidence is not really research." - I don't agree with that. If "incremental research" were the only science, humans would still be living in caves. – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 05 '23 at 12:04
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    @TheMatrixEquation-balance This poster did not say "incremental research is the only research". They said "brainstorming without any evidence is not really research". Innovative stuff is useful, but if you don't have any evidence or support, it's just bullshitting. Might as well ask GenAI to write a paper for you if you don't care about evidence, no one needs you to do it. – Bryan Krause Jul 05 '23 at 15:11
  • Evidence - is for people with an open mind. For someone like Trump, evidence would not even make a dent. – TheMatrix Equation-balance Jul 05 '23 at 15:28
  • @TheMatrixEquation-balance https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18493/63475 – Bryan Krause Jul 05 '23 at 15:45
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    So because someone might not listen to evidence, you shouldn't need to present any to publish a scientific paper? If you just want to spitball ideas, talk to your friends over a beer. – sErISaNo Jul 05 '23 at 23:04