The rules of the publishing game are changing, but for majority of us, this isn't obvious. Overwhelmed by routine and the endless rush, our brains don't capture the major contextual changes that impact our personal publishing tracks.
Every year, a rash of "breakthrough" articles are published that, in reality, convey pseudo-novelty and fragmentation rather than substantive innovation.
Some observers believe that scientific development has slowed in recent years and continues to decline. However, another part of observers, with a more holistic understanding of reality, disagree with such conclusions. They insist that science continues to advance, generating breakthroughs, but in a difficult-to-understand, nonlinear dynamic. Scientific progress is primarily cumulative, building on previous discoveries and preserving useful elements of past theories. But from time to time, discontinuities occur, leading to paradigm shifts and fundamental changes in scientific frameworks. These processes are well described by Newig et al., 2026.
But what about us, "ordinary" researchers, who are forced to publish annually, preferably in high-ranked journals? Should we repeatedly address the same established knowledge, interspersing them with "our own" novelty, devoid of genuine originality? This problem is particularly acute in the social sciences. Scholars have long critiqued the tendency to re-label existing phenomena with new terminology – “old wine in new bottles” – without substantive innovation.
But things aren't so simple. There's a well-known paradox: even if an article is groundbreaking, it will be poorly cited. What can be done? This is a separate issue, and we'll try to devote more attention to it in future posts.
But here we point to a recent trend: a group of top-tier researchers, skilled at deep diving into the tiny layers of reality, are following a seemingly strange practice. In their work, they're introducing new terms to replace established ones. And if, when preparing your own publication, you use familiar terms in your keyword search, you're missing out on much of the objective novelty that lies outside the established and agreed rules. Consequently, you won't be able to objectively reflect what's happening in a given field. This quest requires studying the phenomenon of "eternal innovation" in strategy.
It's a cliché to repeat that there are dimensions that are constantly changing, and there are dimensions that remain constant. Both are true. But our perception often misses this fact due to a number of cognitive limitations. Therefore, experts in transformational transitions are arming themselves with the latest knowledge from brain science. As it turns out, there is emerging need for a basic skill in working with perception. "Eternal innovation" in strategies, when facing stale, coarsened perception, loses their value and ceases to have explanatory power or usefulness.
The solution is to tell a story "in a new way." Only then can perception be reset and begin to embrace the breakthrough power of "eternal innovation."
In our previous post, we touched on the topic of "perpetual innovation" in complex transformational projects. Here, we apply this approach to personal publishing inquiries.
This raises a host of additional questions, one of which is: are top-tier researchers really uninterested in attracting citations to their work? It's clear that, despite all their originality and novelty, such work is rarely cited in its early years. Only other top-tier peers moving in unison, sharing similar complex thinking and goal-setting skills are keen to refer them. Can this logic be seen as a gateway to a new level of influence in the scientific world? Sure. And here again, broader avenues for further clarification and reflection open up.