Which Journals accept conceptual / qualitative papers?

Hello,

Are there any (respected) journals that accept conceptual / qualitative
papers in physics / astrophysics? If I can present qualitative evidence
for a model, but haven't figured out how to fully quantify it due to a
lack of math skills, and yet I can make qualitative predictions that can
be tested.......... over here something should go up..........over
there, something should go down, and so on with a long list of correct
50/50 predictions, can that be publishable? ie, are there journals
where this sort of paper would be welcomed?

Thanks,

Ross

In article ,
writes:

Are there any (respected) journals that accept conceptual / qualitative
papers in physics / astrophysics?

If everything else were OK, and that is a BIG "if", I don't think any
serious journal would turn something down just because it wasn't
quantitative (enough).

If I can present qualitative evidence
for a model, but haven't figured out how to fully quantify it due to a
lack of math skills, and yet I can make qualitative predictions that can
be tested.......... over here something should go up..........over
there, something should go down, and so on with a long list of correct
50/50 predictions, can that be publishable?

Presumably these are "retrodictions". While logically just as good, in
practice real predictions (theory first, confirmation later) are deemed
better. Why? In the case of retrodictions, there is always the
possibility that the theory was tailored to meet them (perhaps not
consciously, perhaps not on purpose)---and could perhaps be tailored to
meet different ones as well. This is probably more a danger if they are
not quantitative.

ie, are there journals
where this sort of paper would be welcomed?

Try it and see.

You can always see if it can pass muster here first. Of course, it
might be too long for a post, but you could post a link to the paper,
and provide a brief summary. (Whether discussion in the group would be
fruitful is another matter, but you might get some interesting followups
via email.)

Possibly Elsevier is what you're looking for,

https://www.elsevier.com/authors/jou...mit-your-paper

In article ,
writes:
Are there any (respected) journals that accept conceptual / qualitative
papers in physics / astrophysics?

There are many phony "journals" that will publish anything for a
price. They are made to look respectable, but nobody with any sense
pays any attention to them.

The standard requirement for publishing is "significant new results
or theories." In general, to show novelty, you need to demonstrate
how your new work differs from existing work. That takes a thorough
understanding of existing work as well as a clear presentation of the
new work. Papers along the lines of "Here's a clever idea, now
somebody else work out the details..." face a high barrier unless
they include some clear reason to believe the clever idea might be
useful.

In article ,
"Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)" writes:
Presumably these are "retrodictions". While logically just as good, in
practice real predictions (theory first, confirmation later) are deemed
better.

Phillip and I have disagreed on this before. I don't think time
order is important, but the number of free parameters in the theory
definitely is.

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