• Question: Does it cost money to advertise a theory to other scientists around the world?

    Asked by fabulousno1 to Donna, Jo, Mark, Stuart, timcraggs on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Sometimes we need to pay to publish papers – but if you want to tell people your theories the best way is to give a talk at a conference

    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Good question!

      You have to pay to go to conferences around the world and talk about your work. You could publish a paper but traveling to another country to talk to other people is a more attractive offer 🙂

    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Yes and No – you can put a theory out on the internet but in general the accepted theories are peer-reviewed by fellow scientists and published in science journals and to publish in the journal you have to pay a small amount (this is to pay the publishing costs and sometimes the reviewer). There is a push however to make this all free and open source in my area of physics since the governments pay for the research it is silly that they should then pay for it again to see it in print – see http://scoap3.org/

    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Hi Fabulous (good name!),

      Not really. We write up our results in journals that other scientists read. Sometimes there is a small charge for publication (especially for colour pictures and things like that) but normally it is free.

Comments

  • Photo: Daniel

    Daniel commented on :

    In principle, you can put your theory up almost anywhere on the internet, and usually for free.

    But most scientists (this varies a bit with the field) will only care about it if it is placed in those corners of the web operated by major publishers who also provide a platform over which the review process can take place (typically secretly, but increasingly also in a more transparent manner). This often involves money in the form of page (or article processing) charges, fees for colour figures or similar.

    But even serious scientists can do it all without pay and without the journals — in the Polymath project, two winners of the Fields Medal (the mathematician’s equivalent of a Nobel prize) and dozens of others collaborated on a proof for a theorem (the kind of theory that mathematicians take serious), and all of this took place on their blogs and in a wiki (note that mathematicians are amongst the few who still largely work alone). Result: The problem was solved within about 7 weeks, way faster than traditional means of collaboration would have allowed. No money involved at all.