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March 17, 2015

Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science | Special Paper 2

Scientific Paper Supercut: "More Research is Needed"

PNIS Editorial Staff¹
1 - PNIS

[Click here for the PDF]

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[Mobile Devices: Click here for a JPEG]

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List of Papers Used in the Supercut:

[PDF]        [JPEG]

What is this?
This is a collage of text from scientific papers written by famous scientists in which a call for future research is made. Either the authors specifically mention a research topic that needs further research, or they just state that more research is needed.

Why focus on “more research”?
It is standard practice in writing a scientific paper to end with ideas for future research (e.g., Bates 2002; Hess 2004 [PDF]; SF Edit, Inc [PDF]; Nature 2010; Domingues-Montanari 2011; USC Libraries 2015), so much so that, if there was a Scientific Paper Tropes website (which there absolutely should be), the phrase “more research is needed” would be one of the first entries (see Phillips 2000). Thus, it was easy to find many examples of authors calling for future research in their papers.

In addition, it’s interesting to note what these scientists, who are the foremost experts on their particular research area, view as the most exciting continuation of their research. Finally, it’s a bit comforting to know that even the most famous and brilliant of scientists have had to fulfill this requirement of a scientific paper (they’re just like us!!).

So these are all famous scientists?
Yes, you’ve probably heard of most of them.

Is there a key or legend in which all the authors and papers are listed?
No, not yet. Part of the fun is figuring out from which paper each snippet of text originates. Some are likely familiar to you. Others are just a Google search away from identification. If you’d like to make such a key, we’d be happy to publish it here.

Why is [Insert title of scientific paper by famous scientist] not here?
There might be several reasons:

1. That specific paper might not have a sentence of phrase in which the authors made a call for future research.

2. That specific paper was behind a paywall. We restricted this to only scientific papers that we could freely (legal or not) obtain on the Internet. Open Access up top!!

3. That phrase you’re thinking of came from a book. We limited ourselves to scientific papers only (although we violated this rule at least 4 times. We have our reasons).

4. We didn’t know about it. Forgive us, but we haven’t read every scientific paper. If there is a great “more research is needed” phrase out there that we haven’t included, we’d love to hear about it. Please send it to us (either through Twitter, or our email address). If we get enough, we’ll make a Part II.

Why are you calling this a “supercut”? Isn’t that term reserved for video clips? Isn’t this technically a “collage”?
Yes, this should not be called a supercut. It should be called a collage. Thank you for pointing that out.