Ask HN: Is there a Hacker News equivalent for research papers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13568474

by haylem • 9 years ago

42 10 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

The title sums it up. Basically, I'd like to know if there's a similar community or format to see the latest most popular research papers, published in free and open access?

Obviously we get a lot of these here already. But I'd be looking at something with a wider reach and encompassing more fields. Or separate communities for each field, as otherwise there'd be a skew in the favor of the biggest communities (as we get here for some languages for instance... but I digress).

I know HN is not always necessarily about "latest" or "current" content either, but you get the idea.

(Tricks to extract most popular articles from HN, Google Scholar or others are also welcome, of course ;))

Update: title fix, didn't know the etiquette.

ikeboy• 9 years ago

Reddit.com/r/science ?

haylem• 9 years ago

That'd be a good example of a similar community I guess, ~but my other requirement was focus on research papers, not discussions.~

Worth digging into though, thanks.

Update: Actually is apparently focused on papers. Thanks!

I want something more like "most popular papers across any field" ("science", while broad, seems already somewhat focused).

It's just always fun to discover stuff that may be unrelated to what you do or know.

turnersr• 9 years ago

Depending on your interests you might like: https://www.reddit.com/r/REMath/

sathley• 9 years ago

http://www.arxiv-sanity.com

raleighm• 9 years ago

https://www.bibsonomy.org/

qwrusz• 9 years ago

This is a great question. Sorry in advance I don't know of one. But it is something I think about often. I tend to read math and economics research papers (have PhD in the latter too if it matters) and have published.

I think there are 3 issues here:

1) there is so much research coming out. Even working paper releases. Its hard to keep up with that volume of work. How to control that flow of work?

2) Research has become very niche. So there are research papers that only 5 people can understand and only 2 of those people even care about. This specificity "problem" is a reality of the sciences but it makes HN type voting system a challenge. An upvoting system is OK for news articles and technical papers that had a wide audience in mind, but for many research papers it can skew the results people see to particular types of "easy" research which are not always very good or rigorous or current.

3) This is the big one I think: We really need a go-to site for anonymous comments on research papers in academia and from other experts working in industry. HN is a great example of the power of such an "anonymous experts option" which I think overall works well here. Sure there are the occasional "troll" comments or the "I googled this topic I never of 5 minutes ago then commented" type comments but in general quality anonymous comments do rise to the top very often on here and I learn more from comments than articles in many cases. I think with research papers, while people are not afraid to attack or be polemical per se, but they do hold back on a lot more they want to say if not anonymous. It's very easy to be a critic in public, but offering an alternative solutions or idea in public can cause problems career-wise and for other reasons.

P.S. As for tricks, I think the usual google advanced search tricks and other boolean gimmicks work quite well (date ranges, "-" to exclude shit, wildcards).

llccbb• 9 years ago

I am currently working on point 3. Don't have any experience in community building, but really excited at the topic and scope of the project.

I have been thinking about the relative merits of anonymous posting vs identity-tagged. On the one hand are the suggestions you make that people may be hesitant to critique or applaud ideas because of political backlash. This would favor an anonymous system. On the other hand, I want to know what certain figures think. There is weight behind what a member of the National Academy thinks, and if they are weighing in, then I am going to pay more attention to those statements than some anonymous poster's.

Dowwie• 9 years ago

Yes, there is and you're using it. The HN community and/or moderators choose not to upvote.

Supraliminal• 9 years ago

I'm working on wikipaper.org

csa• 9 years ago

Academia.edu is a company that is trying to take the lead in this space. I wouldn't call HN-like, but it is at least a place that aims for academic discourse.

Ask HN: Is there a Hacker News equivalent for research papers?

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