Pop Journals?!

[John R. Grehan]

At 08:34 AM 3/29/01 -0800, you wrote:
>Pop journals, indeed!  :>)
>
>
>Peter

What else? Journals such as Nature and Science are prominent because they
are popular. The are popular because they contain subjects that are predicted
to be of greatest interest to the greatest number. That's why the journals may
often fail to publish major advances or developments because they are
not popular at the time. Look at cladistics. I may be wrong and can be
corrected, but I do not recollect either of these journals having the breaking
news on the development of the method, but now the method is integral to
systematic
papers in the journals. Conversely the discovery of Kenyanthropus gets in
Nature because it has something to do with human origins and many, including
myself, have a fascinated interest in the subject area. If it were a fossil of
some obscure insect genus, for example, you would not find it here. Nothing
wrong with a journal being a pop journal, just call a spade a spade.

John Grehan