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Random thoughts - Is preprint the better way? Is Article factory real?
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Canadian Thanksgiving Day comes more than one month earlier than the American counterpart, which is no strange for the season climate issue. As the chilled wind and colorful foliage have reminded the coming of coldness, it is good time to think and write some random thoughts.
Is preprint the better way?
It is not yet known when the preprint (such as BioRxiv and Authorea) becoming popular for researchers, but it seems very efficient and instant to spread and get cited for academic peers without waiting for months of peer-reviewing process. It is also good news for publishers to call for potential manuscript submission. Some other fast publication journals even do more creatively by publicizing the reviewing process and allow the community to reviews/comment the manuscript, such as F1000Research. This has greatly overturned our traditional ways of preferring anonymous reviewers and separate response. Anyway, with more publications coming each year, researchers better think carefully for the purpose of publishing. Those best creative and classical articles are deserved to be polished for many rounds before seeing the light.
Is scientific lab becoming commercialized?
Nowadays, the lab is more and more like a small factory with assembly workers taking account of different parts: lab technician takes in charge of wet lab work, bioinformatician hands on dry lab work, the trainees put the data together, name attractive title and sell the product in conference. The boss who lubricates each assembly pipeline by applying more funds and paying the salary timely. Everybody seems doing their part of high skilled work in the lab. Can scientific lab become factory or company in future? Is it possible for them to sell the service? I have seen some good examples.
<Last updated by Xi Zhang on Oct 10th,2022>