Non-reputable scientific journals

[Royston]

I'm not convinced of the usefulness for an undergrad.

1) You (or at least "I") learn much more from attending talks, seminars, workshops, and conferences (or any other form of human-human interaction) than you do from reading papers.

 

True, but that's clearly beside the point...the context of the thread is finding information that is (for the most part) trustworthy.

 

2) If you're citing a paper in your work based only on (a) being on a topic somewhat related to your work, and (b) being published in a "list of reputable journals" then you should perhaps not cite it at all. If you're citing something because you rely in the information therein, then "I use it because it is listed in an okay journal" is not sufficient. If you cite a randomly-found paper solely based on being published in Nature and having 150+ citations because you have to fill the "overview over the field" section of your thesis, then you clearly have no overview over the field (which in many fields would actually be a lame thing to expects of someone below lecturer level, anyways).

 

I can't see that I even argued that, or more to the point, why you assumed that I was arguing that. As much as it's reassuring that my citations are not based solely on the source, or a tentative link to the subject, I still can't see why (from an undergrad perspective) that a name and shame of certain journals would not be useful. IOW, I simply don't have the technical ability to differentiate nonsense from legitimate. Sticking to reputable journals, at least, increases the probability that the information is more trustworthy than a free-for-all journal.

 

3) I do admit that one can feel very helpless when trying to find suitable interesting, readable, and helpful research papers about a topic, and fully understand why one would ask for assistance in this task. I do, however, believe that it is the duty of the research group (and in particularly the supervisor) to provide this help. Not in the sense of "here, read these papers I printed out for you", but at least in the sense of "Yin&Yan did something on this in the late nineties".

 

I guess, but one of the main learning outcomes of my dissertation, is that you have the ability to use and facilitate checkable and credible sources. So it is (to a certain degree) up to the student.

 

4) Let's face it: Already as of today Google scholar is probably more efficient at telling useful papers from useless ones than a compilation of "reputable journals" could ever be.

 

That really depends on the search term.

 

Besides, the only reason I've devoted 12 hours of my time each day to investigate complicated AGN feedback that agrees with cosmological timescales, is to say, hey look, I study astrofizzics....aren't I clever.

[juanrga]

I can't see that I even argued that, or more to the point, why you assumed that I was arguing that. As much as it's reassuring that my citations are not based solely on the source, or a tentative link to the subject, I still can't see why (from an undergrad perspective) that a name and shame of certain journals would not be useful. IOW, I simply don't have the technical ability to differentiate nonsense from legitimate. Sticking to reputable journals, at least, increases the probability that the information is more trustworthy than a free-for-all journal.

 

That is the point! When you are not expert in a concrete topic you are obligated to resort to 'indirect' measures such as author reputation, citations index, and similar ones. But those measures are only a 'statistical' tool. They say you the probability of that an individual paper was more or less right/adequate, but are not a substitute for expert analysis. When you are an expert you can evaluate the works by yourself.