My Research Strategies

I am one of those guys who love strategy games, have a special edition of Sun Tzu and could quote it by heart 😀 As in everything else… I have a personal strategy about research and I think I will share it with you all. *The children sit on the carpet next to the fireplace, as Uncle Rick opens his book of academic stories*

My first “publication”, if you indulge me by calling it like that, happened on 17/03/2006. Nowadays I wouldn’t even describe it as “research”… but in those undergraduate days it was a reason for pride. It was a course to learn Spanish where the platform changed the formatting, the font, the accents… The small numbers that were supposed to be references at the end didn’t even appear properly in the final draft… a total disaster 😀 However, that platform had an ISSN, they reviewed the material you sent, and it was free; the three main ingredients for a successful first publication 🙂

When I received the certificate for that article I got even happier. Apparently that website was part of a bigger conglomerate that had managed to get approval from the University of UNED (Spain) for their publications. Even nowadays it keeps adding feathers to my cap, because students still follow that course: 3.254 students in ten years (325 students per year). The fact that it was an online course makes it epic material for that line of questioning during a selection process 😀 “Experience teaching online? Mwhahahah! My courses are older than the ones from this faculty! They have had more students too!” (of course you can’t say that openly in a job interview, so I just nod and try to sound humble). I published twice more with those guys and UNED (+5.000 students), which made me realize that publishing in free platforms was AWESOME to share knowledge 🙂

I give preference to free journals offering easy access to the articles. I don’t want the readers to be bothered, write codes or pay a cent. My main interest is that anyone who wishes to read what I write, can do so easily. I have research theory on my side… After all, the manuals clearly say that research is done as an academic activity for spreading knowledge and share its benefits. How do these concepts match with the idea of charging money to the readers for the “privilege” of having a look at your work? “Rent this 12-page article 24 hours for 7 euros”… Really? You can actually buy whole printed books for that money… or 2 issues of National Geographic where some dude had to get near a deadly tropical volcano to take awesome pictures for us. I don’t see the logic there… 😮

Why not publishing everything in free journals? Because you can ditch greedy publishers… but you can’t ditch some important universities that only allow access to the reader subscribing or if the author pays 900 pounds for allowing the article to be free of charge. No… it’s not an e-mail scam… sadly it’s common practice in some prestigious institutions 🙁

Focusing on free journals means that, inevitably, you will end up publishing for some modest ones, so your research has to be impeccable to fend off critics: “Hah hah! You published in a journal with a low impact factor!” “Hmm… yes but I managed to explain you in 4 pages and with the best bibliography available in 5 languages why the steel from Toledo was crucial in three 15th century battles… Are you not entertained???” *The crowd shouts: Spaniard!!! Spaniard!!!*