Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

The importance of science journals

Q: Are scientific research journals really helpful to the science community?

Krishna: Yes, they are!

Because you will be in constant touch with the research going on in your field. You learn new things everyday. That will make your work easy.

Scientific journals represent the most vital means for disseminating research findings and are usually specialized for different academic disciplines or subdisciplines. A scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.

Depending upon the policies of a given journal, articles may include reports of original research, re-analyses of others’ research, reviews of the literature in a specific area, proposals of new but untested theories, or opinion pieces.

Articles and papers in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as research students, researchers and professors instead of professional journalists and therefore are mostly authentic.

The research data presented in the published scientific literature makes you gain a clearer understanding of the facts and findings.

You can avoid repeating the same work. Scientific journals can be used in research and higher education. Scientific articles allow researchers to keep up to date with the developments of their field and direct their own research.

Scientific progress results from the free interchange of ideas, which other scientists then support or refute through their own research, analyses, and theories. Oftentimes, controversial views are intentionally published to stimulate further debate and move the field forward to a clearer understanding of the critical issues and relevant variables. They give us new ideas.

Scientists subject published hypotheses to further scrutiny and publish their supportive or opposing conclusions. Commentaries are published about controversial findings, as well as empirical reports, that may contradict or support a hypothesis. In essence, science is a self-correcting, consensus-building enterprise, whereby any serious inaccuracies in an article are identified and the literature corrected through subsequent publications.

The standards that a journal uses to determine publication can vary widely. Some journals have a reputation of publishing articles that mark a fundamental breakthrough in their respective fields.

In many fields, a formal or informal hierarchy of scientific journals exists. The most prestigious journal in a field tends to be the most selective in terms of the articles it will select for publication, and usually will also have the highest impact factor. In some countries, journal rankings can be utilized for funding decisions (1) and even evaluation of individual researchers.

For scientific journals, reproducibility and replicability of the scientific results are core concepts that allow other scientists to check and reproduce the results under the same conditions described in the paper or at least similar conditions and produce similar results with similar measurements of the same measure and or carried out under changed conditions of measurement (2).

Public policy can be based on sound, peer-reviewed scientific research, whenever feasible. Such policy decisions are rightfully grounded in a large, respected body of research in a given area, not on a single study or opinion.

In a way science journals are our beacons without which we will be completely lost in the darkness. They are very vital for our research.

Footnotes: