What is a “Research Framework”?
It’s not an catch-all term for a list of stuff you just thought up.
Working in an emerging field of science and engineering means that a lot of new journal articles that claim to be “frameworks” show up in my Inbox with a request that I review them prior to publication. That’s the way that science is supposed to work. Scholars submit research papers for review by their peers, so that the quality of published scientific work remains high. It’s called “peer review”.
And it’s not working.
The typical complaint with regard to scientific peer review emphasize that it is unreliable, unfunded, unreliable, and unrecognized, creating a Tragedy of the Commons problem in which academics all want more peer-reviewed publications, but no one wants to do the reviewing.
So I get more papers describing underdeveloped, disorganized thoughts about new topics that are called “frameworks.” I’ve published several framework papers myself, and they have a role to play by helping others improve their thinking about emerging issues.
This article is for scientists and scholars that want to understand what makes a good research framework. It may save me some effort when completing reviews.
