Reasons for SIAI to not publish in mainstream journals

lukeprog

Recently, I gave some reasons for SIAI to begin publishing in mainstream journals, and outlined how it could be done.

I've recently been made aware of some pretty good reasons for SIAI to not publish in mainstream journals, so here they are:

Articles published to websites (e.g. Yudkowsky's work, Bostrom's pre-prints) seem to have gotten more attention, and had more positive impact, than their in-journal counterparts.
Articles in mainstream journals take a relatively large amount of time, money, and expertise to produce.
Articles in mainstream journals must jump through lots of hoops - journals' aversion to novelty, reviewer bias, etc.
It is easier to simply collaborate with (and greatly influence) established mainstream academics who have already jumped through mainstream academia's many hoops (as Carl Shulman has been doing, for example).

I still think there are strong reasons to publish articles in standard academic form (for readability purposes), but I've recently updated hugely toward SIAI not publishing in mainstream journals.

Recently, I gave some reasons for SIAI to begin publishing in mainstream journals, and outlined how it could be done.

I've recently been made aware of some pretty good reasons for SIAI to not publish in mainstream journals, so here they are:

Articles published to websites (e.g. Yudkowsky's work, Bostrom's pre-prints) seem to have gotten more attention, and had more positive impact, than their in-journal counterparts.
Articles in mainstream journals take a relatively large amount of time, money, and expertise to produce.
Articles in mainstream journals must jump through lots of hoops - journals' aversion to novelty, reviewer bias, etc.
It is easier to simply collaborate with (and greatly influence) established mainstream academics who have already jumped through mainstream academia's many hoops (as Carl Shulman has been doing, for example).

It goes both ways, though. Publishing in a journal means inheriting some of its prestige, but also means giving it some of your prestige. Do we want journals that are currently bad to be able to claim to have published papers by high-status rationalists, if those papers are going to be major outliers in quality?

I disagree, for the reason Gerard explains, and because SIAI can be selective about which journals it publishes in.

But I am not sure why your comment was downvoted. It seems fair to ask the question.

8David_Gerard15y

I think we would first need to be sure we had advanced to the stage of being publishable enough to have such problems.

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Reasons for SIAI to not publish in mainstream journals

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Reasons for SIAI to not publish in mainstream journals

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