Some Bastages Scooped Our Idea!!!

For the last few years, Scooby and I have joked with DJ Jazzy Short Stack (aka Jeff Cancino) that we need to launch a new journal...the Journal of Null Findings. Jeff has been "gracious" enough to provide us with a number of HUGE datasets from a major city. We've done about a dozen conference papers and a half dozen journal articles using these data in various ways. All that time and effort is basically for nada because we can't find a logical and significant relationship of any size (minor exaggeration, but not by much).

Come to find out that some mathematicians have taken our idea and run with it by establishing a journal for washed out findings. In all seriousness, they frame this in the proper way, noting that null findings and busted projects sometimes are quite informative...you know, all that stuff we learned in methods classes and preach to our own grad students, then promptly ignore. Kinda like the value of replication (really, really important...just don't try publishing replication research in the absence of "something" new and unique).

I do wonder how this journal will be received in mathematics. It suffers the double jeopardy of being both unconventional (promoting the value in that which doesn't advance the mainstream by confirming dominant thinking) and being online. Alternatively, will this type of free form, open source outlet take hold with time? It will certainly have an appeal to younger scholars more comfortable with online, open, and collaborative approaches to sharing knowledge (though the journal clearly has real standards and expectations).

Alternatively, how do you separate that which is difficult to publish because it is a "true" null finding (disconfirms theory and/or dominant conceptions about an idea) and that which is unpublishable because of poor data/design? This could actually be an incredibly difficult journal to edit.

Scooby and I would get right on the journal idea...but we're too busy looking for new and exciting null findings!