Hi all,
during my Master Thesis, I had the luck to generate a certain amount of novel, valuable knowledge. This encompasses answers to 150 years of morphological uncertainties, high quality assembled coding sequences (and a proteome!), and a likely explanation for an absolutely out-there trait.
The topic however is fringe (to put it mildly). Additionally, it was not supported by funding. However,my PI had to substantially reorient the efforts of the entire group due to some extreme hardships in the last years. While this was managed masterfully, the project I was working for had to be terminated. As a result, my work will absolutely not be published in a peer-reviewed article. This is fine by me, as I'm planning to leave academia. However, because I love what I did, I'd love to make the findings of my Master Thesis public in some form.
I was thinking about publishing my findings as a blog. What do you think about that? Would you make your research public in such a way? What should be considered?
2 answers
Another option is bioRxiv.org. This is a stable site that has been around for years and reaches a lot of people. It is described as a "pre-print" site, but that does not compel you to publish later in a journal. By the same token, some journals will accept papers previously avaiable as pre-prints on bioRxiv.
Publishing an original research in some shape or form is always better than not publishing it at all. However, publishing it as a blog is only marginally better, because not many people will read it. This is assuming that you would not invest much in blog's advertising, because if you had resources for that it would be better to spend them on real publishing.
I think the best option is to publish in a journal that will not impose any fees, or very minimal fees. You would have to do some digging to find them, and could potentially get some help here if you give more details about your research. Assuming that your PI has little interest in investing time into this, you may have to do all the writing and even handle the submission, though I would hope that at least some help will be available to you even if the funding is gone.
Publishing as a pre-print will also not cost you anything, and I think that is the next best option. That will also create a permanent (and searchable) record.
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If it's novel and valuable then why don't you try to publish it as a non-open access journal article. Non-open access doesn't charge for publishing and if it's really an interesting topic then it might be accepted .
This is a good idea in general, but your statement that
Non-open access doesn't charge for publishingis anything but general. There are plenty of closed access journal that still charge exorbitant fees.I sadly have to agree on that one. After my BA, my PI at the time and I crafted a publication from the BA's results. The journal (very low impact factor) charged our working group for publishing in closed-access. The PI however handled everything regarding submission/revision.
Getting all authors (I assume there will be more than just you, if you decide to write a paper) to a particular plan may be the more difficult part? Otherwise you now have options noted in this thread.
The writing may become a lonesome affair, as my PI has to keep the working group afloat with more relevant projects (those with actual funding). The former leader of the project (a postdoc) sadly passed away, hence the trouble/insecurity for going forward with the topic.
You are right. I think submitting a preprint to bioRxiv may be the best way forward from here on. If my PI gives his OK.