The Insight Journal and the Scientific Method!

The Insight Journal seeks to provide a realistic support for the endeavor of scientific research in the domain of medical image processing.

The main motivation for creating the Journal was the insufficiency of the current publications in this domain. Most of those other publications has as main purpose to support the evaluation of scientific productivty for the institutions where researchers are employed and for those institutions that provide research funds.

The delusional character of the current publishing system is clearly visible in its motto:

"Publish or Perish !"


Note that it does not say:

"Research or Perish!"


This nuance have resulted in the inversion of roles where researchers do work "in order to publish it", not because that research work has a significant impact on their society. As a consequence, researchers only embark on publisheable activities, which of course does not include any significant depart from the views currently held by the stablishment of Experts who serve as reviewers of Journals.

The concept of publish or perish is corrupt in its essence and denigrate the natural altruist motivation of performing scientific research. Of course, the motto results to be quite convenient for those organizations that derive a significant part of their revenues from the Administration of the publishing process. Ironically, those organizations are typically, technical and scientific societies, and as a result they have become the strongest opponents of the Open Access Revolution. This retrograde attitude of scientific societies is clearly illustrated by the recent dismissal of a Nobel Prize winner from the American Chemical Society, as a response to the greedy attitude of ACL for preventing the public online publication of a chemical database by the National Library of Medicine. The real reason why researches seek to publish today is because they are expected to have publications in their resumes. It is an implicit understanding that a certain number of publications per year are expected to be produced by every researcher. Researchers who do not fill up those unstated quotas are considered to be unfit for research or simply improductive.

The number of publications in your CV (not their quality, nor relevance, nor impact) is considered when you as a researcher seek to obtain:

  • A Degree
  • A Job in industry or academia
  • A Tenure position in a University
  • A Promotion
  • A Grant from federal or state agencies

    The Scientific Method was introduced by Galileo in the 1500's when he embarqued in a series of attempts for answering fundamental questions about physics by performing experiments.

    Galileo Portrait by Sustermans
    Galileo Portrait by Sustermans


    Galileo was also at the center of the first Scientific Journal, which was published by the "Linceans", also known as the Society of the Lynx. The name of the society derived from the acute view of this animal which conveys the idea that careful observation of experiment was required for finding the truth about scientific matters.



    Reading Material

  • Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve
  • "Conjectures and Refutations", Karl Popper, Routledge Editors. Third Edition 2002.
  • "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", Karl Popper, Routledge Editors, New Ed edition 2002.
  • "The Open Society and its Enemies", Karl Popper, Princeton University Press, 5th Revise edition, 1971.
  • "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Thomas Kuhn, University Of Chicago Press, 3rd edition, 1996.
  • "Against Method", Paul Feyerabend, Verso; 3rd edition, 1993.