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I know this question may be seen as off-topic here or too trivial but nonetheless I would really like to know the answer. I am in an unique position-unlike most researchers I practically don't care about the impact factor I just want to get my work publish as easy as possible and available for as many people as possible but want it to go through the peer-review process. So what will be better, to go through the "standard"(pay-per-view journals)or the online free of charge(for both parties)ones?

If impact factor isn't the key which is better(and/or faster)-going through the big publishing houses who have a "well-oiled machine" and can handle my request with routine and speed or risking in the online-only free-of-charge community?

I know may be I will have problems for that but I think nevertheless I need to tell it. My topic is something quite out of "the mainstream" but I have been working on it for years and I have diverted a lot of from what is "standard" for this community so I am pretty much a lonely wolf and expect enormous troubles going through the peer-review(radical ideas). So what will be easy for me-the pay-per-view or free-of-charge online journals? Can you reflect on that?

Yordan Yordanov
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    This is sort of an XY problem. The business model of the journal should not be your main concern when selecting a journal. In your case, you want to make your work widely available and peer reviewed; those are separate goals that can be reached separate ways. Also your question is a mess. – Anonymous Physicist Feb 27 '17 at 06:08
  • Not sure about easiness but the open pub might well be quicker. – aparente001 Feb 27 '17 at 08:15
  • What else do you want me to tell you? I tried asking my full question-about the ideas I have, the problems I am working on, the results I got, the impact I expect them to have, but even the least I could tell was "wiped out" by the administration who told me I "shopping" something. I have big problems concerning both my work and how to present it but I don't want to brake any rules here by telling you all I am working on and the problems I expect. I don't know how specific can I get on this site? Any advice? – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:06

2 Answers2

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You seem to be conflating two things, namely whether a journal is online and whether it is open access. I'll focus on the open access part of the question, since whether there's a print edition is basically irrelevant nowadays.

So what will be better, to go through the "standard" (pay-per-view paper journals) or the online free of charge ones?

"Better" is not well defined, but in this case the situation is simple enough that the question can be answered: neither one is better, outside of a couple of specific factors.

Open access journals have one advantage, that anyone can easily read the official published paper, and one possible disadvantage, that there might be publication charges. Other than that, there is no significant difference between open access and traditional journals, at least among respectable journals. There are tremendous differences between specific journals (in prestige, rigor of the review process, speed of publication, etc.), but these things simply can't be predicted on the basis of whether the journal is open access.

I said "among respectable journals" in the previous paragraph for a reason. There are tons of obscure, predatory open access journals that will publish anything for a fee. (They often claim to perform peer review, but it's clear from the garbage they publish that the review process is meaningless. This problem is restricted to open access journals, because you can't make money selling subscriptions to a journal nobody wants to read.) You should absolutely avoid predatory journals, since they will actively hurt your paper's reputation.

If impact factor isn't the key which is better(and faster)-going through the big publishing houses who have a "well-oiled machine" and can handle my request with routine and speed or risking in the online-only community?

You are oversimplifying things by supposing that big publishers have a well-oiled machine. Some do and some don't, and the same holds for small publishers. Furthermore, some open access journals are published by big publishers, and some subscription journals are published by small publishers.

My topic is something quite radical I have been working on it for years now and I have diverted a lot of what is "standard" for this community so I am pretty much a lonely wolf and expect enormous troubles going through the peer-review(radical ideas). So what will be easy for me-the paper or the online journals?

If the difficulty is with peer review, then you can't expect an easy time with any journal worth publishing in (i.e., a non-predatory journal).

Anonymous Mathematician
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From your question I deduce that you would like to reach maximal impact (within the target audience). So you want your article to be easily accessible, but at the same time be conveyed through a medium that reinforces trust (hence the interest in peer review) and impact.

The former can be reached by making sure that your ideas are accessible without any (substantial) barrier. You might reach this by submitting a pre-print version to an open online venue, such as arXiv (provided that this does not conflict with the requirements of e.g. a prospective journal).

Then there is the impact aspect. Being published in a respected scientific journal may help to get serious attention from the scientific community, but also adds lead time and the chance of being rejected in the peer review process. Many publishers of top-tier journals also offer open access for an additional fee. You might draw even more attention if you send out a press release after you have been published.

Danny Ruijters
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  • Nope, it is actually quite the opposite-I worked on the edge for a long long time-away from anything and anyone in science(actually this is not true because I had connections to colleagues scientists and philosophers in my home university and I got advice from a few renowned scientists internationally, but the point is my ideas weren't excepted anywhere-I just asked for their opinion and they gave me literature do I didn't have to spend money to get their works but it isn't like I collaborated with them or they with me). But back then I really didn't care as my work was incomplete and I felt l – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:13
  • it needed more time and effort. I walked out both from the scientific community and from academic jobs in every way and worked jobs having nothing to do with science or my education. However, I kept on working in my free time and continued "filling" what I perceived were "gaps" in my university research so I can extend it to the point where I can propose experimenatably verifiable results suited for a project. When I started I had great problems deriving such experimentally verifiable results and science is driven by experiments, so a simple explanationary science wasn't viewed by people in my – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:19
  • university as something worth funding. I needed to derive more results I could publish and on their base propose some research project I can verify. At the beginning when I left the university I had a nice starting point but virtually no good research I could propose to make the case my paradigm is correct-the only thing I could do was to explain results derived by others and touch on questions already well established in my community(my community is virology and the question I am talking about is "Does virus evolution has its limits, how they are determined and does evolution makes them alive – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:23
  • But my peers told me Are viruses alive isn't a question of biology, but of philosophy so they sent me to the philosophy department and told me there wasn't any interest in research about the limits of the capability of a virus to evolve that time. I however didn't backed down or changed my research interests(I had the option but I left it)because I just saw the ability to "crack" the question if I managed to work a better theory of what Life is and how it evolves. I just knew viruses are ideal for such research because if there is something we can test evolution on, it is virus. This is how it – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:27
  • started but not what it became out of it. The more I delved deeper and deeper on the relationship between philosophy and biology and on the impact of the definition of Life throughout the Life sciences the more I understood it wasn't about viruses any more. Their evolution was just a part of something bigger-a pattern repeating itself throughout Life and not only it-the "evolution" of technology, of social systems like the free market, social movements, political parties, even empires I saw in the same way-an increase in either complexity or diversity ruled by their ability to choose to sp – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:32
  • ecialize or complexify. I had to study many things I initially didn't intended to and the more I studied the more I saw the same pattern driven by the same reason-a self-sustaining process-one who doesn't require any external causation and can extrapolate itself merely without a limit in time and space. This wasn't what I intended to discover when I began but that "science of complexity" just fascinated me and I delved ever deeper and deeper in things far beyond my education. I kept my contacts with people in different departments and they advised me to proceed and see how far can I g – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:37
  • I had access to literature, but not grant money. But I didn't mannered I just wanted to see how far the pattern goes. It goes really far far away! So far it returns back to biology-when you understand how do these self-sustaining processes interact with each other you can virtuall define Life and prescribe course for evolution(not predict it but prescribe-there is HUGE difference between these twos-the latter means knowing what options the thing that evolves has, not to predict what it evolves into-this isn't some "magic", just some probability constraints). – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:42
  • In some bizarre twist of faith I ended up where I started to and now am completely capable of achieving at least some of the initial goals of my research-I manage to prescribe the significance of the viruses to the evolution of Life(pay attention to the word prescribe here-I already defined it),I managed to see what their relationship to the definition of Life is, hell, I even got a new definition for a virus and in the process feel like inventing a new science :) But this isn't what I am talking about here. It is the way to present it-I am thinking it is time to finish what I started long – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:47
  • time ago and to "explore my options" but I have diverted so far away from where I started, filled my dictionary with so many concepts virologists don't understand and gone to such lengths it isn't even possible now to communicate them what I have discovered, And this even isn't the problem-this "thing" for a lack of a better word I have developed is HUGE-really huge. The notion of self-sustaining process goes right through the sciences and the more I delve into it the more examples I find. – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:52
  • I have tried explaining problems in physics, chemistry, economics, social science, even political science with it, not just biology. Really think about it-if you have some sort of "looking glass" into evolution on how many places you can see it? And if your "looking glass" can work what can you do with it? I now feel like it IS the time to show it to the community and see what happens. But there come the question-how. Can you understand me? Where to start-what is to be my FIRST step? – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:57
  • I recently also was able to uncover different relationship between the self-sustaining processes I have developed and entropy-I believe it is experimentally verifiable. So I am slowly starting to "go back down" into "the real world" and I can produce experimentally verifiable rpredictions. Does this means this is a new science? Does it means I managed to make a new theory of complexity? May be a new science altogether? If so, where to present it? What should be the first journal to receive the very first paper showing what a self0sustaining process is and how does it works? – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 16:58
  • I don't want to start big-just one paper, one explanation, one prediction for now, only to present what a self-sustaining process is and how their interactions work to generate complexity. This is why I don't care too much about the impact factor but want easy access-so a lot of people can see the very first time this process is used to explain anything. later, I already have enough material to start spreading the notion. As I told you-it is huge-I can apply it to many problems in many sciences-complex reaction networks in chemistry, entropy in physics, the free market, social movements, polit – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:02
  • It isn't biology only any more, let alone virology. I just need that first "stepping stone" to begun-that first connection back to the community to get "back in the game". I worked in solitude for so much time I now feel I have lost my "grasp" on the community. Working alone can be both very productive and very tiresome activity. I am tired of being alone now. I have come back to where I started, I walked a long long way alone and I now want to present what I believe may be a breakthrough. This is why I tell myself-only one paper, Yordan. Just one for now! To get started! – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:06
  • Then it will be many more-I have accumulated the research for it. I just need to go back to the community now and see what happens. As I expect the papers that follow it to go far beyond the scope of the first one and as I believe it really wouldn't matter in the long run what the first paper is, so I don't want to concentrate on the impact factor, but rather on the accessibility. I need something anybody can look, even laymen, something to get it started, to explain the basics and be online for everybody to see but be peer reviewed. – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:11
  • Then, I will go into the details and start deploying the full potential of what I uncovered. I just must start it by now. I just can't keep up with my work any more-the places I see self-sustain processes and their interactions are growing all the time-now I think basically everywhere you can get more diverse behavior out of a system than the one you started with, there is a self-sustaining process involved. I need to know will the community accept my ideas of self-sustaining processes or reject them. – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:12
  • I can't work all alone any more-the continuation of the pursuit where the applicability of the self-sustaining process ends isn't possible for me any more. There are simple too much of them and they go everywhere! I can't see the end of this research, what is more important-I can't know everything. I have been reading all I can get my hands on about theoretical biology for about 10 years. I have been working on the idea of the self-sustaining process for about 6 years. But the amount of books, articles or really entire sciences I think I need to read is only exponentially increasin – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:19
  • The more I know about where self-sustaining processes are, the more it seems to be known about them. I just can't physically keep up with that research-I think it has gone too far. Even when I spend all days only reading articles that can pertain to fields where self-sustaining processes can be found, I feel like I am only scratching the surface here. It is just enormous-I feel like even if I do it all my life I will not be able to only read what is now available as potential fields where self-sustaining processes can be found, let alone make a proper analysis of them, write pape – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:24
  • and deal with the pressure of publishing them. It is just TOO MUCH both mentally and emotionally(and now I feel also physically)to even read everything pertaining to self-sustaining processes, let alone publish it. I just want this burden out of my shoulders and let it see how far in science it can go. This is why I just want a nice quiet little place to publish my very first paper showing what is a self-sustaining process, how it can start other self-sustaining process, how they interact with each other and how they can help us understand the world around us. I don't particularly – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:28
  • care about the impact factor of this paper or of the journal in which it will be published. I just need to go OUT of working alone now and "drop" the notion to anyone who can use it. Let then, see what happens. I have already managed to finish what I set on many years ago(actually I believe they were like 5 or 6 years ago but it feel heavy now-it feels like it was an eternity ago, as thou I have lived centuries, not years)-my virology research is over, I managed to define Life and uncover a potential Grand Theory of Life. All my initial goals are done. – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:33
  • I just now need to get it over with-once and for ALL! Sorry, if it got too personal but I really needed to get this thing out of myself. If I am at the wrong place here-feel free to delete both my comments and question. – Yordan Yordanov Feb 27 '17 at 17:34