Why I will no longer submit to Towards Data Science
I have gotten my 3–4 rejection from Towards Data Science; even though it hurts to be rejected, doing my best to be rational about it and share this experience. Even though it may be early to talk about it, I feel that if I postpone, I will not write, and this story may be important to other Medium lovers (i.e., writers and readers, and haters too!😂 ).
Why do I love Medium?
I have joined Medium about 1 year ago, not sure how long. So far, published 62 stories, and in the last 30 days, we had more than 1.000 views on my stories. Sure, I am not that famous, but those are number I am proud of.
The first time I was invited to a Publication, it was at Geek Culture, I was happy that someone would reach out to me, by their own initiative, and invite me to publish on their Publication; whenever someone reach out to me, I am always excited, and love to collaborate and share. I had no idea how stories worked, and I had memories from the academic world, where journals are like “on the old days with ladies”: they want you, but cannot approach; otherwise, “they are predatory”. By the way, I do value girls with initiative, otherwise I would have never seen a girl naked! Quite a view I must say! 😁😍😎 I like to say, “why bother, the final decision is always theirs”.
I was happy that someone would reach out to me, by their own initiative, and invite me to publish on their Publication
This is why I love Medium, you can publish, and you are free. Same feeling for Amazon Kindle (KPD): you are the only barrier between you and your intellectual expression.
Do not fall prey for the fake idea of rejection as sign of quality
I wrote a whole book on the topic, and one thing I have learnt from research: the biggest discoveries in science were not peer-reviewed; not on the modern sense. The journal that Einstein published was top, and had a reject rate of 10%; Towards Data Science is 100% to me. To be fair, all the Publications I participate rejected me a couple of times, something like 10–30%; I have no problems with rejection, they are part of the deal; of course, to be clear, I am not happy to be rejected, I would never submit something to publication unless I had a feeling that it could enrich people’s life, this is my most basic rule of thumb. I would recommend to TDS to open a Nature branch here, at least we know what we are dealing with and do not bother in sending publications to be rejected.
Towards Data Science IS NOT a scientific journal, it is lower on the rank
One of my biggest criticism on my book is that: no one should filter researches out, just the reader. Those “journal”, and Towards Data Science IS NOT a scientific journal, it is lower on the rank, should not decide what people should read. The curation should be mild; Planck was the editor of the journal where Einstein published, and it seems to me he found the research after published.
See his way to think, quite wise for an editor I would say! 😍
“To shun much more the reproach of having suppressed strange opinions than that of having been too gentle in evaluating them” Max Planck [cited on my book]
My main concern
A PhD candidate, student of mine, that I follow as a freelancer, was using a story from Towards Data Science.
They may be creating an illusion of quality. Rejecting does not mean quality. Think this way. You have two different water filters. Would they be the same on the final result? of course not! Their inner state and material of the filter will influence. Nonetheless, if I give you water from both, unless you have equipment, you cannot tell the difference; for the story, the equipment is the proper academic expertise. Scientific journals at least give feedback on rejection, some are quite long and detailed, and they are constantly measured by other institutions; notwithstanding their cracks I have been brought to attention, they are still better than Towards Data Science, or any publication here on Medium with high rejection rate. They are opened for submissions, and lack transparence on the review process; they send you for a bunch of “craps” as reject reasons. I cannot see any difference between them and Geek Culture, which just accepted this publication!
High rejection rate is not a measure of story quality. They send you for a bunch of “craps” as reject reasons.
Final remarks
It is true that the Publication on Medium can do whatever they want, I just decided to no longer play their game, and focus on Publications that actually live up to the Medium big idea! We have more power than we think: all the institutions need people to validate their meaningless standards.
“The best ideas can change who we are. Medium is where those ideas take shape, take off, and spark powerful conversations.” Source
The story they rejected was complimented by an expert on the field, and got quite an engagement: I was invited to one publication and just got more invitation just now, even to feature on a website on the topic. No idea what you guys want, but, please, do not make Medium an academic peer-review environment. Deep learning would be dead now if it were for the academic peer review process. We must collaborate, not filtering ideas out. We grow when we share, we learn when we disagree.
