Welcome to Journalfire
Until recently, large media publishers controlled what we read, listened to, and watched. Now blogs, podcasts, and Youtube have put the users in control. Unfortunately science has lagged behind. Publishers still act as the primary filter of scientific information, with some top-tier journals rejecting up to 83% of submitted papers even before they are sent to peer review. Combine this with the fact that grants and faculty positions often hinge on the number of publications one has in these top journals, and the result is that a handful of people have tremendous impact on the global scientific agenda. Journalfire exists to put scientists back in control of science.
Journalfire provides a centralized location for you to share, discuss, and evaluate published journal articles. You, the scientists, are put in charge of determining what studies are significant and noteworthy.
Use Journalfire to create groups to share articles and ideas with scientists in your lab or from around the globe. Currently Journalfire links to every article in the PubMed database, with access to more databases on the horizon. When discussing articles, you decide whether the discussion is public or private, and whether or not to use your name or remain anonymous. Journalfire creates a permanent open access record of each discussion and links it directly to a specific article or group. See what articles your colleagues are discussing in their groups, and see what comments are being made about the papers that interest you most, including your own.
Journalfire provides a new way to assess scientific merit. The value of a journal article is often first assessed by the name of the journal in which it appears. Unfortunately, this is typically determined by fewer than five people. Journalfire offers a more democratic approach. By enabling you to evaluate published articles, the combined opinion of the scientific community can be used as a measure of scientific merit.
Journalfire search results take into account several criteria, including the amount of discussion an article has generated and the rating an article has received. Thus Journalfire enables you to quickly find the papers that other scientists are talking about, or papers that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks.
Journalfire was created by a group of graduate students who were frustrated with the current system of scientific discourse and publication. We believe Journalfire is a step in the right direction towards a more open and democratic scientific community. If you’d like to join us, visit journalfire.org.
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