Where is the border line between a novel, creative work and work that is of scientific value? I have received reviewer comments like:
the ideas are creative and interesting but work adds little scientific value.
What do reviewers look for when making such comments/judgements? They often do not clearly state what was missing in the paper. My field is computer science.
Answer
Let me describe two extremes, though they come from very different fields.
In mathematics, if you re-prove an old well-known theorem with a new technique that might be applied elsewhere it will be very interesting, whereas if you prove a new theorem with only old standard techniques it may have much less interest.
Similarly, in Computer Science, a boring and straightforward program might answer an interesting question. If the question isn't about CS itself, this might not be considered "scientifically interesting", whereas if it were a longstanding CS question it would be. On the other hand an interesting and creative program might answer a question of no significance. This might be judged either way.
In many of the sciences (chemistry, psychology, ...), you can, and many do, use very standard statistical techniques to answer questions. But to be interesting, the questions themselves have to be significant since the technique isn't. However, what is significant to you might seem trivial to others and vice versa. Even if you use a "creative" technique to answer an insignificant question it might not have much scientific merit unless someone can conceive of using that technique to answer other, more significant questions.
So, the variables are, at least, (a) the question attacked (b) the techniques used. I'm guessing (only) that the comments you got imply that you are strong on (b) but not so strong on (a) and the reader didn't extrapolate. But it depends on the field.
No comments:
Post a Comment