Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:35:03.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Optimal Publishing Strategies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Kevin J. S. Zollman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Journals regulate a significant portion of the communication between scientists. This paper devises an agent-based model of scientific practice and uses it to compare various strategies for selecting publications by journals. Surprisingly, it appears that the best selection method for journals is to publish relatively few papers and to select those papers it publishes at random from the available “above threshold” papers it receives. This strategy is most effective at maintaining an appropriate type of diversity that is needed to solve a particular type of scientific problem. This problem and the limitation of the model is discussed in detail.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 185 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Berry, Donald A. and Fristedt, Bert. 1985. Bandit Problems: Sequential Allocation of Experiments. London: Chapman and Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, Alvin I. 1999. Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, David. 1988. Science as a Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, Larry. 1996. Beyond Positivism and Relativism: Theory, Method, and Evidence. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, Herbert. 1952. “Some Aspects of the Sequential Design of Experiments.” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 58: 527–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, Kevin J. S. 2007a. “The Communication Structure of Epistemic Communities.” Philosophy of Science 74(5): 574–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, Kevin J. S. 2007b. Network Epistemology. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Zollman, Kevin J. S. 2009. “The Epistemic Bene.t of Transient Diversity.” Manuscript.CrossRefGoogle Scholar