Serendipitous and Unexpected

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Ryan Lilian:

Most research effort does not produce what is thought of as a traditionally publishable result. That doesn't mean, however, that nothing was gained by conducting the research. These results, whether they are failures or merely perplexing, can provide valuable insights into open problems and prevent other researchers from duplicating work. We started a journal that focuses on serendipitous (I have no idea why this worked) and unexpected (it seems like this technique should work on this problem but it doesn't) results. The goal of the journal is to provide a venue where ideas can flow and be debated.

The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results (JSUR) is an open-access forum for researchers seeking to further scientific discovery by sharing surprising or unexpected results. These results should provide guidance toward the verification (or negation) of extant hypotheses. JSUR has two branches, one focusing on Computational Sciences and the other on the Life Sciences. JSUR submissions include, but are not limited to, short communications of recent research results, full-length papers, review articles, and opinion pieces.

Recently, we launched the beta version of the journal site at http://jsur.org. We would love to get your feedback and even better, a submission for the first issue.

To get the journal started, we're looking to collect a large number of short (2-4 page) reports. I know you have something to publish. Please help us spread the word and forward this information to interested colleagues.

Sincerely,
The JSUR Editorial Board