By John Borghi
Building on several recent developments in academic publishing and social media, a new publication platform for the distribution of scholarly material was announced this Wednesday by The Society for Concise Science. The new online platform, named after the chemical name of the protein, titin, (which is 189,819 letters long and, thus, cannot be printed here), will publish a journal, tentatively titled
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, exclusively through Twitter.
In his introductory press release, Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg’s loquacious editor-in-chief, Dr. A. Ey, described the origins of the new journal “Observing the slow move from traditional publishing metrics such as impact factor to alternatives based on online discussion, it became obvious to us that we could optimize scientific communication by publishing directly to social media.” Several dozen pages later he went on to state that, “Since they will not be constrained by the artificial limitations imposed by ‘luxury’ journals such as Nature or Science, researchers will be able to thoroughly describe the theoretical basis, methods, results, and conclusions of their research projects in 140 characters.”
When preparing submissions for the new journal, scientists will apparently be asked to include both a hashtag with the name of the journal and lengthy digital object identifier. While information about multi-author submissions, the peer review process, and the integration of tables and figures into journal submissions is still forthcoming, reaction from the scientific community has already been quite mixed. Comments on the science-based Tumblr BoldSignals have ranged from “This looks amazing!” to “This is completely ridiculous.”
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