The Voynich Ninja

When I tried before, about three journals said that it is not in their scope because the method is new. Even now, when I am trying to submit, due to the large number of pages (109 pages in total = 8 pages article + 99 pages for supplementary materials), the editor said that they will not accept any article for review with this number of pages. What journals do you recommend?

The first and foremost recommendation is to keep the length to within the limits that any journal specifies.

Have you ever published any paper/article before?

An alternative recommendation is not to publish it with a journal, but on a web site or at academia.edu .

Can you summarise your argument to reduce the number of pages?

What kind of argument is it?

(07-12-2023, 06:02 PM)Pardis Motiee Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I tried before, about three journals said that it is not in their scope because the method is new. Even now, when I am trying to submit, due to the large number of pages (109 pages in total = 8 pages article + 99 pages for supplementary materials), the editor said that they will not accept any article for review with this number of pages. What journals do you recommend?

Can you be more specific? What exactly are you trying to publish?

I ask because I found your You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., before you registered here, sharing the link to your You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. preprint article in 2020 on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The preprint article is only 19 pages with the remainder of the 28 pages dedicated to references and supporting tables. This leaves me wondering if your current work of 109 pages is entirely new or simply building upon the preprint or the same as the preprint but with more references and tables added.

What do you hope to accomplish with publication? If your current work expands on your previous work, are you now trying to get it peer reviewed or are you just wanting to get it published somewhere other than Lingbuzz? If you want to get peer reviewed, is your current work ready for that step or do you need it publicly reviewed and discussed further first? Are you hoping to have others cite your work? Are you hoping to have it read by a larger audience? And, dare I ask, are you hoping to eventually make some money from it (some do)? As Rene indicated, based on the length, and especially if your work is either not ready for peer review or if you don't want it peer reviewed, a journal may not be your best option and you may want to go for open access publication or research sharing, like Academia, instead. Keep in mind that some sites charge for open access publication and sometimes authors have and use research grant funding to help pay these fees. Book publication, whether self-published or using a publisher, may be an option to consider, particularly if the goal is monetary (though you'll likely have a smaller audience than with Linkbuzz). You can get book publication ideas from others on this site as well.

Where have you already tried to get it published? We can make all kinds of recommendations for journals and open access and book publication, depending on your goals but it would be helpful to first know where you have already tried submitting it. If you search this site alone, you will find several examples of works other members have had posted online and this may give you some ideas where you might publish or share yours. Though no one has used it recently, this site also has a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where you might post your paper for review by the editors but you will need to post your full research elsewhere and link it in your forum post (click You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for how peer review works on this site). If you do an internet search for "voynich manuscript abstract", you will find several publication and/or research sharing sites. And if you search for "voynich manuscript" on those, you will find several articles and papers at least mentioning it in each of those sites, for example: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (especially the Cryptologia journal), and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (their Elsevier site is where you can submit papers for publication).

I have little experience in writing articles, and with this unusual method of decoding and desk rejection today, I don't think that it will be in the scope of any journal (I have sent it mainly to the journals in the subjects of cryptology and linguistics). Now I sent again to a journal in the field of linguistics.
 
Regarding the decoding method, I tried blog, website and even writing book. I sent the book to the best professors of dialectology and computational linguistics, they said it was a creative method and gave their comments, same time stating they can't judge exactly for the method used which they are not familiar with.

For this new article (its preprint without supplementary materials is at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), I have increased the samples and included a dictionary for Voynich, which is for evaluation of the method explained years ago. It can be said that it is more like a game, fun and sharing the results step by step, but on the other hand, an attempt to answer the critics who easily said that it is a nonsense method, which made me try harder to prove it. A fighting spirit.

Those 99 pages are practically methods, modification on twenty paragraphs, because you can't just write and expect them to be able to repeat the work that was done in three months.

(08-12-2023, 05:27 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Can you summarise your argument to reduce the number of pages?

What kind of argument is it?

The main argument to reduce the number of pages comes from the historical practice of printing, where the number of pages in a journal is typically limited, while the number of those wishing to publish their research is hopefully quite large in a society where sciences do flourish. These two factors come to a contradiction further complicated by the sad circumstance that printing a journal, let alone running all other aspects of its production, comes at a cost. These complications are partially resolved by setting some reasonable limit on the number of pages of an article. Oftentimes journals charge fees on all pages or on "excess" pages, e.g. the hard limit is 10 pages, but you have 4 pages for free and if you have a 6 page article you pay just for two excess pages. Some journals will not charge fees on the author but rather on their institute, and even will not reject the (worthy) paper if nobody pays, but just the author will not receive free preprints in that case.

From the said perspective, the number of pages means little when we shift from a printed journal to an electronic journal. However, prior to being printed, papers are typically reviewed, which consumes time of editors and (importantly!) peers reviewing the paper. Hence the page limit acts also as reasonable time saver in the process of periodic publication. If, due to huge delays in reviewing, a scientific journal gets published too rarely, it will fail to represent state of the art which would present a competitive disadvantage.

Last but not least, there are the readers. As Mr. Holmes once put it, "if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable".

@Pardis Motiee If your first goal is to receive some kind of review (so that you don't ultimately publish something nonsensical), I will take the opportunity to highlight that we have the (long neglected) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in this forum where one can publish a draft of their article and (hopefully) get some review from the forum Editors. It's of course not exactly a peer review in the sense of the word of a scientific journal, just some detailed feedback from people who've been for some time in the Voynich world and are hopefully able to express relevant critique. No review is guaranteed though - that depends on the spare time and enthusiasm of our Editors who are not many. E.g. I think an article of mine still hangs there unreviewed for I don't know how many years. Mind that the page quantity of ninety nine may somewhat repel them from your article.

If we consider an electronic journal, 8 pages are definitely fine, and the supplementary material is just hyperlinked. But I'm not sure if you really need that huge amount of supplementary material, and if the journal of your choice would accept that.

Thanks for your advice. I have published it on my website and will appreciate if anyone would like to give reviews.

And what is the address of your site, please?

(22-01-2024, 04:36 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And what is the address of your site, please?

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.