 I was asked why I was publishing videos here in YouTube and not in your traditional way, in academic papers. Should you publish in academic papers or should you publish your research in an alternative media, like in YouTube? These and other questions will be addressed in this video. Hi, my name is Gonzalo Raineri. I'm a designer, architect and PhD candidate and this channel is also about design, sustainability and other treats. Finishing my PhD in design was taking me to a dead-end road. Something had to change and it certainly was changing, but was it worth the sacrifice? What comes next? What is going to happen to all my research results? The answer to the first question is definitely yes. Doing a doctorate in design took my knowledge of the discipline to a conscious level. It was like opening my eyes for the first time into the world of design. It made me remember my first years of design school, the same but in steroids. Questions started popping into my head and the need to respond them made me to research and read. Read and read even more. And the answers usually surprised me. This comes from the fact that as I searched for answers I was confronted with different authors, different opinions and this made my conclusions unique. And they should be unique otherwise I wouldn't have dug on deep enough. The purpose of a PhD is to learn how to do research, academic scientific research and at the same time to expand the discipline you're working on. But since I'm close to finish it, doubts flourish. Besides the satisfaction of receiving another diploma, what comes next? A post-doctorate position? Maybe. But what happens with the four years of research with all the knowledge I've gained and created? A thesis is a 300-page document. So who's gonna read it? Designers and not great readers. They're trained in a more visual way. If you follow the traditional route during your PhD you will publish the progress of your project in academic journals, magazines or submit them to seminars and conferences. I've done all this. And this will continue after you have obtained your PhD because you want to reach as many colleagues as possible or because the institution where you work demands you to do so. We all know the university ranking scheme. The grants and research funds involved in all this. Did you know that there are 400 million of academic papers and other scholarly literature? This according to Google Scholar, 400 million. The most-seeded paper of 2019 was a paper by Facebook head of artificial intelligence research, Yan Lekun. It was seated over 16,000 times. How many times was your paper seated? But what happens with the rest of the papers? A depressive surge from institutions in order for your papers to be seated? Reported in a controversial article in Science in 1990 suggested that more than half of the academic articles remain unseated five years after their publication. So in a few words, your efforts or mainly half of the research in the world has no or little impact. Why even bother? Simple. Your research is going to make design advance. We are confronting every day more and more complex situations. The question isn't if you should quit research or not. What should you do with your research? I'm totally convinced and believe in all the scientific ecosystem. I believe in the blind revisions, peer review and strict criteria imposed to assure that the quality of public research is at the scientific level. On the other hand, fraud is everywhere and this system with all of its control can prevent it. It's not flawless. There have been hundreds of fake articles published. Either way, it's still the best system we have. The problem here is the low impact that publishing in scientific journals have. If your aim is academia, they are okay. But if your aim is to make a real impact on society, maybe there are other ways for doing so. Carl Sagan was a renowned scientist who in the 70s until the mid 90s created a TV show called Cosmos. Surely we all remember it. The impact of it was that far beyond any other scientific paper ever published. It encouraged new generations to follow a path in science to devote their life to human knowledge. Well, he and the team he worked with figured out that to have a real impact they needed to go mainstream. Buck it up in science and translate it into an understandable language for the masses. And TV was the answer. Designers, as I stated at the beginning, are educated in a visual paradigm. Back in my early days, we were more comfortable reading magazines. Today, students connect to content. They connect to knowledge. And YouTube is the new TV. New generations don't watch TV and they certainly read less. Yes, we have Netflix, but that's unreachable for us at the moment. If you want your research to have an impact, you must find ways to make your content available. Yes, you must follow all the traditional steps for a serious research. Send it to Academic Journal for publishing. Do what is needed to validate your work. But make sure it has an impact. Make sure that it reaches to whom it's supposed to be useful. And live in Chile, way out of the Design Research Olympic. Fortunately, the university work has become part of Cumulus. This will open new frontiers for the work we are developing. Also, my research is in Spanish and with a truly local perspective. I believe that every corner of the planet has something to say. It took me a long time to define what to do with my research. How could I impact as much young designers as possible? Not only my colleagues, but academic papers. The greater the audience, the greater the impact. My research is about design and sustainability. And if I can impact on the way young designers design, that means less contamination in the future. And that's what it really matters, doesn't it? In my case, that is why I decided to go both ways. The academic traditional way and YouTube. I also decided to release the content in English. Also for the same reason, the universe of possible viewers is bigger. One of the objectives when I started my PhD was to create new models for a more sustainable way of doing design. The objectives when making this YouTube channel are still the same. Create sustainable opportunities for human kind. Please, don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss my next video. It's called Design is a Political Act Always. Ciao!