Here's my quandary for the day -- I have an online interface for my SMTP survey data that allows users to do things like see current overall results, investigate the state of the worker nodes used to perform the measurements, and perform lookups against the data. However, I'm worried that I can't put this interface online because that might count as prior publication, and therefore preclude me from presenting information derived from the survey at academic conferences. I have a similar question about blog posts as well -- does blogging about something I am investigating mean that I can't publish it later?
This must be a common question. How do other researchers handle these sort of publication issues?
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posted at: 09:11 | path: /research | permanent link to this entry
#1 Titus Brown
My short idealistic answer is, you should care more about citations than publication. If people start using your stuff, then it doesn't matter if it's published in a crap journal.
That having been said, it depends a bit on your field. In mine (biology) people aren't aware of things that have been blogged or are available online, period. So it doesn't really matter if you post about something in advance.
I did run into trouble with BioEssays when I tried to publish Cartwheel. In response to my boast that it was *actually used by hundreds of people* they said "clearly it is not, therefore, novel." And rejected it. BMC Bioinfo took it & published it, though. *shrug*
Good luck with whatever you do :)
#2 Tim Jones
What about the reverse? In a paper, you would not be able to say "previously published data" to refer to something you'd posted on a blog. I expect this would mean blog postings would not count as "previously published" in the context of a conference.
It's a fuzzy area, but I'm sure it's fine if you're only posting muses and interesting tidbits. Might be different if you put the whole paper up on the blog before submitting it somewhere..