A New Journal Wants to Study Science Itself
Science does not just produce knowledge. It also produces systems: journals, peer review, publishing incentives, research careers, and norms about what counts as “good” evidence.
A new journal, the Journal of Research on Research (J·ROR), is being built to study those systems directly. Its founding editorial explains that the journal grew out of tensions within academic publishing: open-access ideals, commercial publishing realities, concerns about article processing charges, and the hidden labor required to run scholarly journals.
The central idea is simple but important: if researchers want better science, they also need better evidence about how science is organized.
J·ROR is designed as a home for “research on research,” a broad field that includes meta-science, science and technology studies, scientometrics, research evaluation, library science, higher education studies, and the sociology and philosophy of science. Rather than treating these as separate silos, the journal aims to bring them into one shared conversation.
The most interesting part is that J·ROR does not just want to publish studies about peer review, publishing, and research culture. It wants to experiment on its own processes. The journal plans to use open peer review, publish review reports, partner with MetaROR, and test new editorial practices over time.
For readers of This Week in Science, the takeaway is this: the future of science will not be improved by better discoveries alone. It will also depend on whether researchers can build better systems for producing, reviewing, sharing, and governing knowledge.
