I've recently started dabbling with books in order to broaden my knowledge, and thus far, I've found anthropology, biology and history to be very intriguing.
I've been thinking about ways to get compact and (more) up to the minute portions of information on these topics on a regular basis (read subscription), and thought that magazines could be worth a try?!
I've seen "Nature" be cited in some of the books I've recently read / am reading, and would like to ask what more worthy magazines are out there, as well as if they're worth the read for a casual like me.
What are your recommendations and experiences?
794 sats \ 6 replies \ @ama 28 Jan
There are many scientific journals, for every scientific discipline you could think of. Nature is one of the multidisciplinary journals, being Science, PNAS, PLoS One, a few other.
For general culture, you can browse through some of those, but for more in depth learning about a certain topic, literature databases are available to perform searches on certain topics of interest. When doing serious research about a topic, one should perform a systematic review, to get a complete understanding of the field.
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What is your stance towards Nature accepting ChatGPT as a co-author for scientific papers?
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AIs are tools and, as such, I think that they should/could be included in the Material and Methods section of papers.
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Regarding the articles themselves, within academic publishing there are different categories of papers. Research papers or articles are the main way in which researchers publish their original work. They are the primary source scientific information, and therefore they are very specific, in depth reports of facts and results of the research work, with all the details needed for other scientists to fully understand it and replicate it.
Another interesting type of papers are review articles, which contain a systematic review and summary of the current understanding on a certain subject at the time of writing. They are secondary sources of information, which are often easier to understand than original research papers, which are very specific and can some times be very complicated.
There are some journals which specialize in review articles on specific academic discipline, which might be an excellent resource. They are usually much better than popular science magazines or web sites, in which articles are normally written by journalists instead.
As an undergraduate biology student I loved Scientific American, which publishes (requested, not submitted) review articles by researchers who specialize on that particular discipline.
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Thanks for the detailed comment, seems like I'll settle for the reviews then; Scientists can get pretty freaky when it comes to their explanations, ain't it 🥲
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Some might, hehe, of course, but in any case, papers can get very complicated, since they have to give al the details so that the whole research can be repeated by an independent research team. Review papers, on the other hand, don't need to be as detailed and complex, but they relay on references to original papers (primary sources).
For casual reading, as you stated on your original question, review articles should be appropriate, indeed. Their authors already made the systematic review, the filtering of data, facts, and results, and the summarizing and discussion of many research papers. Occasionally, you may find some details interesting enough for you to check the bibliographic references, get a copy of the original paper and dive into it.
Libraries, mainly in universities, subscribe to many scientific journals, and if you have access to them, you can get a copy of individual papers through them. And in some cases (see [PLOS](https://plos.org/, for example), the contents of the journals are of free access, since the authors pay for publishing.
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Wewski... SN delivers yet again!
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So many magazines that used to be interesting are now totally woke. Totally all about (and almost only about) climate crisis and anti-racism and diversity.
I took a look at National Geographic magazine recently. It's unreadable, so woke.
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Yeah, I can imagine that political correctness is a must in order to be featured nowadays...
Which should be avoided?
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I thought Bitcoin Magazine was pretty decent, last time I looked! Otherwise, honestly, I don't do magazines much anymore.
I'm seriously bummed about National Geographic Magazine going downhill. I remember as a young person, sitting down with stacks and stacks of old magazines (almost everyone kept them for years), going through them, reading, looking at the great pictures, and learning a lot about the world.
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Hands down, Monocle. densely packed with interesting nuggets of diverse cultures. I love it so much that I review some impactful issues (on me) on my IG.
If you ask me about my writing goals, I will say that I hope to bring more visibility and vitality to Japan, the land where I once spent 2 glorious years (and snagged a wife). Which is why I’m reviewing the July/August 2022 issue of Monocle: it features 2 things, strawberries and Fukuoka. . My boy is besotted with strawberries - to the extent that he gobbles the fruit without tucking into the cake. So I thought acquiring strawberry trivia would help me score brownie points with him in future. The feature article on Oishii, a Japanese strawberry start-up in New Jersey certainly did not disappoint. Not only did I learn that it’s best to eat from the side for a more balanced taste (the sugar in strawberries is concentrated at the bottom), but this ingenious company has managed to trick bees into pollinating in an indoor vertical farming environment. Fun fact: According to the United Nations Environment Programme, of the 100 crop varieties that provide 90% of the world's food, 71 are pollinated by bees. Cool, right? It exemplifies the smarts and iron-clad will of the Japanese. When they are hell bent on achieving something, they will invent the technology (and even ‘deceive’ insects) to get the job done. . There are numerous kinds of strawberries in Japan. I don’t know much about the varieties but I can tell you that Fukuoka’s homegrown brand is called the Amaou. That’s because I lived in Kumamoto City, which was a 2-hour bus ride for me if I wanted to jazz up my weekend in Fukuoka City. Indeed, Fukuoka was vibrant and dynamic and appealing enough for me to brave this long bus ride on a Friday evening. It’s ranked 22nd on Monocle’s Quality of Life survey this year. . If you look at my Monocle clippings, it seems that Fukuoka has been slipping down the chart. Still, it remains top-notch in my heart. I fondly remember taking a leisurely stroll from Hakata Station to Tenjin Station and stopping by the characterful Canal City shopping mall along the way. Or the afternoons I spent at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (yea, weird choice for a traveller’s destination but me Asian). Or eating ramen at a yatai. You should visit it (& Kumamoto)!
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quanta.com is also great for vulgarized articles
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You could of course read Nature papers, but if it's not your area of expertise, it might be complicated at times, even though they are supposed to be written for the general scientist.
Maybe a website like https://phys.org/ would be a better choice. They cover the main discoveries of all specialized journals, with the added advantage that they will write an explanatory shorter article on their website, making it easier to understand for the layman.
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Oh, cool!
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I love magazines in theory. In practice they're kind of like a subscription box that tends to be half promotional garbage, half mediocre and/or irrelevant stuff, and occasionally something profound that has a huge impact on you.
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Yeah, already expected something like that... Sad.
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