Skip to content
Open
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
6 changes: 3 additions & 3 deletions README.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Well this depends a lot on what you are interested in. There are a few broad cat

* __Health magazines__: In the health sciences there is a similar set of journals like the [New England Journal of Medicine](http://www.nejm.org/) and the [Journal of the American Medical Association](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/journal.aspx). They have the same benefits and caveats as the Science magazines, but with a more health flavored bent.

* __Mega journals__: Journals like [PLoS One](http://www.plosone.org/) and [Peerj](https://peerj.com/) also publish in a wide range of areas and a ton of papers. The review criteria here is that it must be "correct" but not necessarily a "breathrough". So the heterogeneity in the papers is high. If a paper seems too good to be true, again it is worth taking with a grain of salt.
* __Mega journals__: Journals like [PLoS One](http://www.plosone.org/) and [Peerj](https://peerj.com/) also publish in a wide range of areas and a ton of papers. The review criteria here is that it must be "correct" but not necessarily a "breakthrough". So the heterogeneity in the papers is high. If a paper seems too good to be true, again it is worth taking with a grain of salt.

* __Field-specific Scientific journals__: Most scientific journals are not megajournals or magazines. These journals tend to be very field specific and tend to be much heavier on the details. This is where most science is published. The papers tend to be less focused on "breakthroughs" but are also less consistently risky to trust in these journals. In my area the journals might be something like [Biostatistics](http://biostatistics.oxfordjournals.org/) or [Biometrics](http://www.biometrics.tibs.org/).

Expand All @@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ The best places to find published academic papers are:
* Journal websites are a good place to start. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_academic_journals) is a list of journals.
* You can also read papers in biomedical sciences on aggregator sites like [Pubmed Central](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/)

One problem with journal websites in particular is that many of the papers are behind a paywall - you have to pay to read them (see the next section). Increasingly you can find the latest papers on soemthing called a pre-print server. These papers aren't peer reviewed yet, but a large fraction of them ultimately end up in peer-reviewed journals. The nice thing about these papers is that they are frequently the latest research and free to read. Two good preprint servers are [bioRxiv](http://biorxiv.org/) and [arXiv](http://arxiv.org/).
One problem with journal websites in particular is that many of the papers are behind a paywall - you have to pay to read them (see the next section). Increasingly you can find the latest papers on something called a pre-print server. These papers aren't peer reviewed yet, but a large fraction of them ultimately end up in peer-reviewed journals. The nice thing about these papers is that they are frequently the latest research and free to read. Two good preprint servers are [bioRxiv](http://biorxiv.org/) and [arXiv](http://arxiv.org/).

## Open access and #icanhazpdf

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -109,4 +109,4 @@ Reading academic papers can be a great way to catch up on knowledge. But in gene

## Find out if others have read it

A lot of the papers I find interesting other people also find interesting. One nice way to learn a little more about a piece of scientific research is to see if it has been discussed on blogs. One thing to keep in mind is that blogs often have an agenda, so you should read the posts with a heavy dose of skepticism as well. Still, they can provide useful perspective on papers you've read.
A lot of the papers I find interesting other people also find interesting. One nice way to learn a little more about a piece of scientific research is to see if it has been discussed on blogs. One thing to keep in mind is that blogs often have an agenda, so you should read the posts with a heavy dose of skepticism as well. Still, they can provide useful perspective on papers you've read.