Are Academic papers pointless?

 Are Academic papers are pointless?

Well, I cannot say every academic paper is pointless, but most of the academic/research papers are pointless/useless because, Every Academic paper claims, their model is best-compared to the present existing models but, none of them are used in real-time circumstances.

Let me give one example, I have read several academic papers so-called research papers on covid-19 detection with some deep learning or machine learning model with more than 99% accuracy but, when it comes to real-time, even the author of the paper will choose RAT or RT-PCR for the covid-19 test. 

There are many academic papers on autonomous vehicle path detection, Traffic signs detection, object detection which claim they are one of the best models but, they are not even used by some startups.

When it is not that useful, why to publish the paper by paying some $1750, $2000, which was a waste of money. 

The way academic papers are useful.

1)For publishing their knowledge.

2)For creative writing without plagiarism. 

3)sharing their ideas with the world.

4)industry-academic collaborations. 

If the above-mentioned things are only the uses of academic research papers, In the olden days (when people are not much aware of google or internet) some other person needs to publish our research by taking copyright on that research but, today there are a number of platforms like Youtube, Github, Linkedin, You can make your own blog for free of cost, where you can publish your work without transferring copyright of your project to someone, and totally for free of cost. 

I'm pretty sure that 90-95%(I don't know about the remaining 5% people) of undergraduate students will visit some blogs like towardsdatascience, Medium, Analytics Vidhya, etc. (or) some other person's GitHub (or)  some youtube channel to do projects (or) to learn something. They don't download some research papers to do their project. (Honestly, most people don't know how to download IEEE papers or some other research papers, the only thing they know is googling and try to search in Github).

If you want an example let me give you a real-life example, I'm a student at University, our university professors gave an assignment to implement an IEEE paper by dividing Students into group of 2-4. Honestly 4 groups implemented my  projects, which I open sourced in my GitHub.(none of group tried to read an research paper, even a student with 9.5 cgpa.)

Here I would like to mention some best self-publishing sources.

Youtube: Nowadays, youtube was playing the most important role in sharing information. Most of the students( maybe some professionals also) using youtube channels like khan academy, code basics, etc. to learn new things (or) to understand the existing things.  

Github: No doubt, anyone in the software industry or student must know this, Every developer uses    Github. Even researchers who publish their papers should open-source their code in Github for public use and for more development in that particular research area.

Linkedin: This is the best site to connect with industry leaders and professionals, you can also post your working project and its use here.

Blogs: This may not get a great reach in public, but still people can showcase their skill here. There are some free space providers like google came up with Blogger, WordPress and there may be some other free blogs. 

If you can wait for some extent of time they'll even generate a passive income for you. Leaving all these things and paying some thousands of dollars for publishing your hard work which will never generate you any kind of income or benefit is not necessary I believe.

What I believe is, if we are doing something, it should be something useful to us (or) at least it shouldn't waste our time and hard work.

If you think publishing a research article by paying some $1750 will give some credibility to the researcher/professor, according to the 2021 UGC regulations there is no consideration of publications to evaluate a researcher. Refer to this link to know the 2021 UGC regulations Click here. (youtube video) 

Note: I'm not saying this because Elon musk or some others said, I'm sharing this to get awareness for students, and I personally suffered from this kind of issue. If someone disagrees with this article/blog. I'm really sorry, I just shared my view.

Special thanks to Nilesh Kumbhar sir.

Thanks for reading💓