When to publish one's work
Coming to the end of a writing-heavy week with 5 paper deadlines, the experience from these publishing processes reinforced the three necessary conditions to me on when to publish (and on what to focus in the paper, besides the story line). When is my work advanced enough that I can publish it? When can I attempt not only writing it down (you should always do it as it clears one’s thoughts), but also making it accessible for the rest of the world (being aware of your responsibility for the body of human knowledge, the valuable time of potential readers, and your future reputation)?
It comes down to the triple filters of Socrates:
-
Truth: Are your results true? Do you trust your experiments and the underlying code base? Your interpretation? If you are aware of (or suspect) any bugs, abstain from publishing the results. If you have randomly fluctuating results, abstain from reporting cherry-picked good-looking ones.
-
Goodness: Is what you want to say novel and beneficial to the reader, i.e., interesting? You have a certain responsibility for not polluting someone’s reading list with something you know is in the end not helpful. You have to have something to say, i.e., something to add to what is already out there that is poptentially valuable to at least a handful of readers.
-
Necessity: Even if your result is somewhat novel and correct, does it help? Is your approach doing something different (showing different properties, even if not giving better results) than existing alternative solutions? Can you pinpoint reasons why it is worthwhile occupying oneself with your work? It comes down to if your work adds to the body of knowledge out there (if it deliveres “Erkenntnis” on some level).
If your intended work - and often you can only assess this after advancing your writeup so much - passes all three filters, go forth and publish it.
You may find the following guidelines helpful in determining the story of your publication (doesn’t matter if this is a blog post, a paper of something in between): your work must contain the following information and make it easily accessible for the reader, and that already in the abstract - ideally by having one sentence for each of the four points below:
- Problem: Which problem do you solve? Make sure the reader finds it interesting and relevant.
- Method: How to you solve it? You should be able to explain the gist of it in a sentence.
- Result: Explain your findings and relate them to the state-of-the-art.
- Importance: Explain the potential impact of your work. Think big and realistic.