When I was doing the research for the introduction and conclusion section, I did not find anything that looked related enough. That’s part of why I think it might be novel enough to be worth publishing. Essentially, it is a study of the prevalence of a given abnormality in a wild population. I spent much longer on Google Scholar than “a brief skim” and still had to get really tangential to have anything to cite at all.
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when I say the same field, I don’t mean the exact specific taxon and region. I mean literally the entire field, eg butterfly taxonomy, North American botany, whatever it may be. Picking those reviewers is to some extent just a box-ticking exercise to provide handling editors with a starting point to find reviewers
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I don’t either. I mean the topic of the study. In this case, the prevalence of abnormality in wild populations.
There’s likely a lot out there in the literature about weird morphologies, color patterns, and the like. I’ve published some things on aberrant morphology/color patterns myself. Don’t know what organism you’re studying but if you have iNat records showing the organism/aberration and can solicit some input that way you might find a couple of possible reviewers.
there are some review sites out there, which also accept papers from non-academics for review.
https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv
https://osf.io/preprints/paleorxiv
https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv
https://osf.io/preprints/edarxiv
https://www.researchsquare.com/
https://www.reviewcommons.org/
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
https://osf.io/preprints/agrixiv
https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv
https://theoryandpractice.citizenscienceassociation.org/
https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/sites/icpsr/home
see also
https://spi-hub.app.vumc.org/pp-service/browse
…
Just to name some popular peer review platforms of which some accept papers from any.
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The problem is trust.
What if you write some cool paper, you give it to some one to review it, he then thinks that it is a cool paper and he sells it as his own work.
You could give your paper to your neighbor, he reviews it and changes the name and puts it in a journal and then he will get famous and a nobel price, and you cant do much about it.
the other problem is, if no one trusts your neighbor, he is may a known clown, so your work that could be worth a nobel price will be seen as satirical waste of time.
Thats why you want some famous people to review your work, some people where the society puts theyr trust in.
So how can you fix such problems?
Thats where the peer-review portals come in.
You upload your work, and they give your work a unique ID.
Some even allow you to edit your work at a later point of time.
Once your work has the ID by some authority, it is accepted as your work.
People can then review it, but if they copy it and state that it is theyr work, you have the ID that proves that you had the same work before them.
May there is a fix for that to keep it some how more private.
You may can put your work into a registered letter, sealed by some authority, and send it to your self, then hand out your work to some people to review it.
Later they copy your work, and you take them to the court and there you throw your sealed letter at them with a postal stamp that contains the date. It will be hard top that evidence, if it is a sealed letter by some authority, the other party will have a hard time to fake that.
May some court would accept this evidence, but you should check that before.
Now any one can peer review any thing. May you are the guru in your town, your do a work that proves that the moon is build out of cheese, and your buddies will review it and may as always they will accept, what ever you say, as truth. But this means nothing to the rest of the world.
So you want some famous truthful person to say, that he had read your work and that it is worth a nobel price, probably some one like a doctor, may doctor Fauci him self. In such a case the whole world would trust in your work, even if you are an ape from the tree.
And that is a lot what academia is about now days.
Get some famous names who will say that your work is worth a nobel price.
So you can follow the chain of fame. Get a doctor or professor or Fauci to tell the world that your work is worth it.
In the other hand, to some it may still means nothing and they will not trust in your work, and maybe they will not be that wrong in not trusting you or some famous names.
So how to make your work trustful to others, may even without famous names, may not even reviewed by a doctor or any?
I would say, keep it simple, so that even a kid can follow, provide some non false logic, do not juggle some magic tricks with statistics, keep it based to real facts which can be proved in a simple way.
If every one can follow you and if no one can disprove you, then it is may really worth a noble price, even if you are not an academic doctor and may even if all academics disagree with your work.
Also it would not be the first time, where all academics disagree on some thing that may is an accepted fact.
Galileo Galilei got a lot of fame with his stolen telescope, even when the Medicis learned about his hoax they were to proud to tell that they did fall for his toy.
Nicolaus Copernicus got his rehab after only 500 years, when the last one accepted that Rome is not the center of the universe.
How ever most people probably know since long ago that we circle around the sun.
So the question comes up, can we do worthwhile science outside of academia?
Aristarchos from Samos
Giordano Bruno
Ignaz Semmelweis
Alfred Wegener
Gregor Mendel
Michael Servetus
William Harvey
Amedeo Avogadro
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Mary Anning
Barry Marshall & Robin Warren
Barbara McClintock
Ludwig Boltzmann
…
Non of them got accepted by academia.
They did laugh about them, declare them as nuts, banned them, drive them into suicide and so on.
Today no one would dare to question theyr findings.
So that is also academia and some times far from science, and the other way around, some times science can be far away from academia.
Wow. Your blog is super inspiring @ceiseman !
Do you have any posts detailing your methods for preserving the mines and raising the larvae?
I tried to raise quite a few larvae a few years back, but I failed for the most part.
I don’t see why not! https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S0187-71512025000100122&script=sci_arttext started off as https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/249581846 and if the original observer hadn’t written it up, I would have eventually reached out and suggested it.
I do think there is value in pushing things out of the gray zone where people “in the know” are aware that, oh yeah, species X is present in Z and so forth but it hasn’t been documented…because I started out as an outsider, and like Will Rogers, all I knew was what I read in the papers. In my sphere (pteridology) I would say there is value in reaching out to the original observer to see if a collection was or could be made, so that there’s a voucher on file somewhere to accompany the publication.
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I’ve only read the OP, not the responses.
Here I will equate “academic” with “professional” or otherwise recognised and paid people.
I’m not an academic, I’m just an intelligent & interested person. Also I don’t have to get paid, so I have time that academics don’t.
I’ve been looking at hundreds of examples of a particular tree, and found that the literature about their habitat, growth, vulnerabilities etc is not only sparse, and serially paraphrased beyond all recognition based on a single researcher, but in many cases is simply wrong.
My big problem then, is how to get that knowledge out there, seeing as how I’ll never get published in a journal. A kind of glass ceiling effect.
how someone in my position can do worthwhile science (as opposed to gathering data points for a “real” scientist
Hmmm, I spose it’s a matter of definition, but I’m gathering tons of data points, not in a terribly scientific manner, but certainly better than what’s in “the literature”. I’m also doing a small amount of analysis, again not terribly good quality, but again way better than what the professional have done.
I guess the thrust of this reply is something like “don’t be despondent, you are probably doing something very worthwhile, but getting it out there might be a hurdle.”
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I do! https://bugtracks.wordpress.com/rearing/
A lot of people (myself included) have some trouble when first starting out just because it takes some practice and close inspection to determine which leaf mines actually contain larvae or pupae that are alive and well.
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Have you read papers or books related to your topic? Maybe an author could be suggested as a reviewer. Journals are desperate for reviewers, so you don’t need the big names in the topic. Someone at a local community college or university might be willing to review or to suggest a reviewer. Maybe ask a librarian for suggestions – they’re amazing sometimes. Is there a friend or acquaintance who is familiar with some aspect of your topic and who you respect? That might be a good person to review or to suggest a name.
If all else fails, simply explain to the editor that you have no idea how to make these suggestions and you’d appreciate their help. Most (not all) editors want to encourage people and will help if they can.
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As a iNaturalist user who started as an amateur and then entered the academic research space, this is an understandable perspective. As an iNatter, I would be frustrated if someone contacted me to collect leaf tissue samples or insects for them and then never get back to me after I send the samples. What did I do all that work for? How ingrateful!
As a researcher… there is a ton of research stuff where data gets collected and either is never analyzed, put off indefinitely, or doesn’t have findings significant for publication. For example, I once spent dozens of hours sieving soil with much help from a soil scientist. I ended up not using any of that data in my main analysis. Would you want to tell someone “thanks for all those insects you collected, but we ended up not using it in the publication.“ ? Better than no response, but defnitely not an email I would look forward to sending…
What I will say is this: in contributing to our knowledge of biology, academics and non-academics have different opportunities and limitations, but both could benefit from each other (see paper from Wheeler). There are also many barriers. I dare say there are some academics out there who envy the naturalists (See Wheeler 2023 (sorry, 1923), “The Dry-Rot of Our Academic Biology”).
A final thought: I once pondered the OP’s question. But for me, the question is now flipped: What can I do, as a researcher in academia, to enable people to conduct worthwhile science outside academia? Not just in data collection but in research design, data analysis, writing publications… though that might be a tangent.
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@arnanthescout Wheeler’s address was published in 1923
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Whoops, thank you so much for the correction! I did not proofread very thoroughly…
If the flowery language and antiquated references were removed, that same lecture from 100 years ago could be given today and still be relevant.
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That’s a bit of a different scenario, though. What I was describing was the journal asking for names and contact information; if the journal then decides to use those reviewers, they would have the initial manuscript submission and know who submitted it; they would send copies on to the reviewers.
I’m not sure you understood what I was saying. The journal picks the reviewers and handles all that; they just require that the paper’s author “suggest” possible reviewers.
That is part of finalizing a manuscript: there has to be an Introduction section about how the current study addresses a gap in the knowledge, and a Discussion section putting the findings into the context of what is already known. That’s why I was kind of insulted by the earlier advice to do “a quick skim of Google Scholar,” as if I could possibly have completed a manuscript without doing much more than that.
What I found in my deep dive into Google Scholar was that there were few papers even relevant enough to cite. There were studies about inducing abmormalities in experimental populations, and about comparing different ploidy levels, and some very old ones anecdotally describing similar abnormalities, but I couldn’t find anything about prevalence of abnormalities in wild populations.
Well, I tried that approach in my cover letter, but then the automated submission system has a separate, mandatory form where this has to be provided.
The purpose of the suggested reviewers is to help the handling editor figure out who might have the expertise to review your paper, as the handling editor might be from a different specialty. The reviewer doesn’t have to be somebody studying the exact same thing - just someone with the background to be able to critically evaluate your methods, arguments, and conclusions. If you don’t find anybody with recent publications looking at your exact subtopic, maybe there are people using similar methods for a slightly different subtopic or have expertise with a different aspect of your study system who would still have the background to review your work.
e.g. - even though all of my publications have been about birds, I have also reviewed papers about fish, because the authors studying those fish used methods similar to what I have used with birds.
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I hate those. Reviewers have to cope with them, too. That’s why I stopped reviewing. Such a mess.
Oh, and I didn’t mean to imply you hadn’t looked at the literature. Sometimes people don’t realize they can communicate with the authors – didn’t occur to me for a long time. That’s all I was responding to.
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Personally, It matters little to me. Why? Well, I learned a long time ago that the scientific experts are pretty much a click that makes their own self famous. What I mean is this.
Every type of flora and fauna that was ever “Discovered” by scientists, was long known to the regional and indigenous people, who never get any credit for the discovery, because they are not part of the click, and do not have a piece of paper from the click group that says they have the right to “discover” something.
I lived in the Amazon rainforest for 20 years in the 1970s and 80s and worked with Amazonian tribes, many who knew every plant, animal, insect, fish, and bird in the forest. I learned many of this flora and fauna that were unknown to science at that time. None of which was ever named after the people who knew what it was for thousands of years before a person belonging to the click and having the right piece of paper, making them “Worthy” came along and said, “Hey! Look at this undiscovered thing I found!”
I know of a tree in the Yucatán that can cure Leishmaniasis. My father contracted this disease back in the 1970s and was dying with it. We had gone to every tropical disease expert of that time, and they said there was no cure for it. He had taken every kind of medicine they could think to prescribe, and was just getting worse. Finally, we just took him home to die. I figured that this was not a new disease to the Mayas who had lived in that region for thousands of years, so I traveled deep into the heart of the Mayan district (a political region reserved for the Mayas at that time.) I went to the most ancient of the Mayan villages and sought out the oldest living Mayan I could find. With the help of a translator, I told him what my father had, and asked him if he knew of a treatment. The 100+ year old Mayan man told me to find a certain tree, and wait until the moon full to strip the bark off of it. He said the bark would secrete a sap that I was put into the open ulcers all over my dad’s body. I did exactly as he instructed and treated my dad, and he was cured and is still alive today.
Even today, the only medical treatment available for Leishmaniasis is chemotherapy. I have told many doctors, and scientists about this first-hand event, and they look at me like, “Hmmm…. and where did you you say you got your doctorate in tropical medicine from?”
I first encountered the Camu Camu fruit back in the 1980s. The Amazonian tribal people use it as bait to catch fruit eating Piranha. I ate some of it and said (There are several witnesses that will attest to this statement), “This fruit is chock-full of vitamin C! I have no doubt that one day some scientist will “Discover” it to have the highest concentration of vitamin C of any fruit in the world.”
Lo and behold, I was dead right! During the Covid outbreak of 2020, I instructed the Amazonian tribes I was in contact with to eat Camu Camu regularly to build up their immune system.
One time, a Brazilian fisherman killed a large anaconda that surfaced next to him canoe while he was fishing near where I lived. It took six full-grown men to drag it onto a beach, and it was measure at 13 meters and 40 centimeters. I know the man who measured it personally. However, if you ask a bunch of scientists, they will argue until they are blue in the face that it is impossible for an anaconda to grow over 30 feet long, because, you know, if they did not discover it, it cannot happen. Of course, if one of them discovered it, it would be an earth-shattering “Discovery” and that click approved person would be showered with praise.
So, I now care very little about what “scientist think” or “approve of”. They are just a click that love to pat each other on the back and praise themselves for how great they are. If you don’t have their piece of paper and are not part of their little click, you are not “Worthy” to discover anything.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against true science. I just don’t believe you have to be part of their click, have their piece of paper, and their approval to be a “Real Scientist”.
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I am with that, as long it works it is working, it does not matter if famous academics agree or disagree.
This is a good argument to academia.
If they dont know the tree it does not exist and by that the tree is sort of protected.
A good academic should disprove what you found and know, else some rich people will send theyr paramilitary gang to unroot the last tree to cure them self.
Sadly this is unlikely, because of the narcist nature that cries for fame.
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