Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results
I recently received an email message announcing the creation of a new journal, entitled The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results (JSUR), which focuses on reporting research efforts that differ from “what is traditionally thought of as a publishable result.” They are looking for papers in both Computer Science and Life Science. (here is a link to a page describing contribution types in more detail.) Below is the announcement and call for papers:
Most research effort does not produce what is thought of as a traditionally publishable result. That doesn’t mean, however, that nothing was gained by conducting the research. These results, whether they are failures or merely perplexing, can provide valuable insights into open problems and prevent other researchers from duplicating work.
We have started a journal that focuses on serendipitous (I have no idea why this worked) and unexpected (it seems like this technique should work on this problem but it doesn’t) results. The goal is to provide a venue for the dissemination and discussion of ideas and to enable more efficient research.
The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results (JSUR) is an open-access forum for researchers seeking to further scientific discovery by sharing surprising or unexpected results. These results should provide guidance toward the verification (or negation) of extant hypotheses. JSUR has two branches, one focusing on computational sciences and the other on the life sciences. JSUR submissions include, but are not limited to, short communications of recent research results, full-length papers, review articles, and opinion pieces.
Recently, we launched the beta version of the journal site at http://jsur.org . We would love to get your feedback and even better, a submission for the first issue.
To get the journal started, we’re looking to collect a large number of short (2-4 page) reports. I know you have something to publish.
Please help us spread the word and forward this information to interested colleagues.
Looking at the author guidelines, it looks as if submissions will be reviewed both by an editorial board and through a peer review process. In addition, an interesting note is that all articles will be open-access and Creative-Commons licensed. I’ll definitely be happy to read some of the articles that come through here once they start publishing.