Editing 1805: Unpublished Discoveries

[[Ponytail]] walks up to [[Megan]], and makes the observation that when a scientific discovery is made, it then takes a while to publish it. She then goes on to note that there are probably research teams making {{w|Nobel Prize|"Nobel-Prize-worthy"}} discoveries that have simply not been published. She is obviously curious if Megan is working on something like this, and tries to see what Megan is working on, but Megan prevents her from seeing this by partly closing her laptop. Then Ponytail asks Megan what she is doing but Megan just tells her that she isn't the one working on a project like this and ask her to "Go bother someone else."

[[Ponytail]] walks up to [[Megan]], and makes the observation that when a scientific discovery is made, it then takes a while to publish it. She then goes on to note that there are probably research teams making {{w|Nobel Prize|"Nobel-Prize-worthy"}} discoveries that have simply not been published. She is obviously curious if Megan is working on something like this, and tries to see what Megan is working on, but Megan prevents her from seeing this by partly closing her laptop. Then Ponytail asks Megan what she is doing but Megan just tells her that she isn't the one working on a project like this and ask her to "Go bother someone else."

In the first two panels, [[Ponytail]] is referring to the general issue that, to publish a discovery on a scientific topic, it can take a very long time, especially when the discovery is "Nobel-Prize-worthy". Obviously the first step is for the researcher to demonstrate rigor by more supporting experiments (see [[397: Unscientific]]), plus summarize the discovery into the format accepted by the {{w|scientific journal|journal}} the {{w|scientific paper|paper}} is submitted too. The latter can take considerable time by itself, especially if the first journal the paper is submitted to declines publication. Because other journals chosen afterwards may have a completely different layout (for instance in physics, the journal with the greatest {{w|impact factor}} is {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}}, then followed by for instance {{w|Science (journal)|Science}} and then {{w|Physical Review Letters}}. All three have very different layouts regarding format and figures etc.) Thus the paper may need to be submitted to various journals until one accepts, which may also take a few months, and even when accepted it can take anywhere from 25 days to 150+ days just for the paper to be processed through the publishing system [http://www.nature.com/news/does-it-take-too-long-to-publish-research-1.19320 due to various reasons], including the nature of the publishing process, assigning extra work as conditions for acceptance, or even formatting problems. This has prompted researchers to come up with some [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=926 interesting] [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=581 work-arounds].  

In the first two panels, [[Ponytail]] is referring to the general issue that, to publish a discovery on a scientific topic, it can take a very long time, especially when the discovery is "Nobel-Prize-worthy". Obviously the first step is for the researcher to demonstrate rigor by more supporting experiments (see [[397: Unscientific]]), plus summarize the discovery into the format accepted by the {{w|scientific journal|journal}} the {{w|scientific paper|paper}} is submitted too. The latter can take considerable time by itself, especially if the first journal the paper is submitted to declines publication. Because other journals chosen afterwards may have a completely different layout (for instance in physics, the journal with the greatest {{w|impact factor}} is {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}}, then followed by for instance {{w|Science (journal)|Science}} and then {{w|Physical Review Letters}}. All three have very different layouts regarding format and figures etc.) Thus the paper may need to be submitted to various journals until one accepts, which may also take a few months, and even when accepted it can take anywhere from 25 days to 150+ days just for the paper to be processed through the publishing system [http://www.nature.com/news/does-it-take-too-long-to-publish-research-1.19320 due to various reasons], including the nature of the publishing process, assigning extra work as conditions for acceptance, or even formatting problems. This has prompted researchers to come up with some [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=926 interesting] [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=581 work-arounds].