How scientific research gets published, and how you can know how to trust it

Today I want to write a bit about how scientific information is produced, how it gets published, and how or why you should trust it. The process of publishing scientific information is very different from most other publications, and the process can even take several years after the initial discovery or experiment has been done! This might seem very annoying, but this long process ensure that the published research is of high quality, which means that it can be trusted on the basis that is was published.

All of you who already have a science degree won’t learn anything new from this post, but this is instead aimed at giving everyone else a peek into the process of publishing scientific information.

Writing a scientific article

When researchers make a discovery, finish an experiment or end an investigation, they will write it into a type of document called an article. This has very strict guidelines for how it is written, so the researchers/authors must follow these very formal rules when they write this article. This article will include several parts, and the parts depend on what scientific field it is written about. Typically a full article will include an hypothesis that is describing what the researchers are testing or looking at, a method part that tells you how to replicate the experiment or research for yourself, the results that report the results of the experiment while the discussions part discusses these, and finally the conclusion which will tell you how the results fit the hypothesis. In addition there is the abstract, which is kind of like a summary, and this will include the most vital information, making it fast and easy for people to read the abstract and judge if they should take a closer look at the entire article. This abstract is often at the top of the article, and it is what most people actually look at. There are often more parts, but this was a quick introduction to a scientific article. If you’re interested in writing one, or want more information about it, then check out this paper about writing a scientific paper.

The format of an article is to be as precise and short as possible, and this allows even big discoveries to be written on only a few pages worth of paper. Most are under 10 pages long, so it’s a short read, but they can often be very difficult to read for non-scientists, since they don’t waste time to explain anything that is obvious to those who work in the same scientific branch. Even scientists from closely related branch can have a really hard time understanding the papers from the other branch!

Despite being very short, actually writing a scientific article is very difficult, and can often take a long time unless you are good at it. It might not be long, but you often have hundreds of different sources you are linking to, and lots of information that needs to be as compromised as possible.

Now it’s time to peer-review the article

Once an article is finished you would expect it to be published, but it is not that easy! First they have to be peer-reviewed. What this means is that the article is sent to the scientific journal they wish to publish it in. This journal decides they are interested, but not until someone has verified it. In order to do this they send it to 2-4 people who are working with the same type of science, but are not involved in the article. Their job is to try to find problems and faults with the article, and trying to disprove the research.

If these peer-reviewers find faults in the study design or the method, then the researchers who did the experiment might have to scrap the entire thing. Luckily it is usually not that bad, but it happens from time to time! Often they find minor mistakes when they peer-review papers, and this can then be returned to the researchers, corrected, and peer-reviewed again. Even renowned scientists have to peer-review their work before they can publish it, and even these often need to fix some minor mistakes before it is published.

There are some scientific journals that do not require articles to be peer-review, and this is typically a very bad sign. I don’t really trust these articles myself unless I find another good reason to, since I think it is pretty shady to decide to publish "good" research in a “bad” scientific journal that does not even check out if it’s good research or not.

When the paper gets accepted

If (or when) the peer-review is accepted, the paper can finally be published in a scientific journal. There are many of these, and some have a much better reputation than others. Most are very niche specific, while others accept submissions from a much broader branch of science.

Most reputable scientific papers are hidden behind paywalls, and these can often be extremely expensive! You typically get access to them for free if you work at or attend a university, but not all. There are however some journals that are well-renowned, but are still completely free. Luckily the abstract (the summary of the most important findings in the paper) is usually always available for free, so this means that anyone can check it to verify information that they have been given. I often link to articles that are pay-to-read, but the abstract should be good enough to verify that what I write in my post is in fact “true”.

Anyway, when the paper is published, the information is freely available to use, despite the fact that reading the original article might cost you money. At this point you can freely write about the discovery, include it in textbooks, or use it as a source when publishing new findings about the same type of research.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading about how scientific information is published!

When you are reading this, keep in mind that I am an ecologist. I have done my best to make the post apply to scientific methods in general, but some things are certainly different for some branches of science. For example, I am only familiar with experimental studies, and the details on how you would do studies that are purely based on literature might be a bit different.

Anyway, this is a really big topic, but now you are hopefully introduced to how you get your science information delivered to your favorite websites or Steem authors.