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In our previous work, Anonymous et al. (2002, Nature), Anonymous et al. (2003, Science), Anonymous et al. (2009, Cell), we established the validity of our appro

by plg 11y ago

In our previous work, Anonymous et al. (2002, Nature), Anonymous et al. (2003, Science), Anonymous et al. (2009, Cell), we established the validity of our approach and we outline the details of our methodology necessary to repeat these kinds of experiments. Here we use this approach to address a novel question, ...

logicallee 11y ago
very good and succinct comment. completely summarizes my reaction.
- dalke 11y ago
  The paper isn't suggesting 'Anonymous et al. (2002, Nature)' style links. In fact, it addressed that concern directly: > It is suggested that, if using parenthetical referencing, we are not referring to the author(s) any more but to a few title-keywords of the article and do not refer to the journals name. Those title-keywords can replace the authors’ names completely. They can be chosen by the author(s). Taking the APA citation style as an example, citing Nosek and Bar-Anan (2012) could look like this: "...how to change scientific communication (e.g. Opening Scientific Communication, 2012)". The full reference should then be placed in the reference section together with other bibliographies starting with the letter O. The latter can be applied to the Vancouver citation system, too. I happen to think it's not a useful solution, because 1) 'chosen by the author' is a free-text field open to all sorts of ways to hack the system, 2) names are easier to transliterate than titles are to translate, and 3) citations are often not made because of the main topic of the paper but can include also minor points which are later found to be more important. Using the author's name is a more neutral link in that case. (For example, I've seen a paper cited because there's a one line comment about the software used to make an image in the publication. That software became popular, but there was no publication about the software itself, so people cited that first paper instead.)
wyager 11y ago
Not sure how I feel about this idea, but papers could easily be given a UUID.
- tjl 11y ago
  There's the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) that one has for a paper in digital form.
qrendel 11y ago
So use numerical identifiers, hashes, or PGP keys, in conjunction with a moratorium on outing yourself as the author associated with a certain key before a given length of time has passed, during which the work is vetted.
d0mine 11y ago
Could you elaborate what is your point? For example, if 2000 scientists (that may or may not work together) use "Anonymous et al." name then how anything inside an article will make someone choose a particular scientist's papers from a list of papers in a journal? Obviously, if you're reading an article; you may recognize the work (science is very specialized: if you understand the article; you'll probably recognize the author (the group) even if all references/names are removed anyway -- but you need to read the article). The suggestion doesn't remove all bias but it can remove some. There is no silver bullet that would make people rational.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  The authors in their paper propose a different approach to citing articles, which is to cite the article name instead of the author. This criticism, while humorous, is off-base from what's actually being proposed. This is not an example that the authors gave, but you might write something like "On the Origin of Species (1859)" instead. This joke also misses the point in that a follow-up anonymous article would not, to match the author's intent, reference the authorship of previous work. The whole point is for each article to stand on its own, so referencing yourself pseudonymously as the author of a previous article does not achieve the goal. I don't want to be "that guy" who takes the humor too seriously, but I worry from the comments so far that people will conflate the humor and the actual proposal. The overall aim and proposal of the article is to find a way for papers to be judged individually on their own merits, rather than on the merits of their author, the author's institution, the author's nationality, or the paper it was published in. This is a worthwhile goal even if we cannot see a serious means by which to achieve it. To be fair to the jokes, while reading the article I was unsure if it was satire. I'm still not completely sure. I believe the authors are sincere in their belief in anonymity as promoting merit, but I remain unsure whether they think their proposal is realistic, and whether or not they are making some kind of meta-point about the state of scientific review by observing how far away the current review process is from one that would be (as best as we can make it) unbiased. That is to say, upon reading the paper, the idea of implementing their anonymity proposal seems ridiculous - and this realization may be partly the point of the paper, to get the reader to realize how many different points in the editorial process depend on the author's identity rather than the material's merit. It does not strike me as satire, because the work takes itself seriously, but it may seem like satire because of how large the gap is from where we are to a meritorious review system. "Ha! It would be ridiculous for work to be reviewed, published, and promoted purely on its own merit, rather than based on the legacy of the author." On the other hand, it's hard to say how well a fully anonymous system would work. Human biases often serve a useful cognitive function in allowing some filtering operation to be performed more efficiently, albeit with less accuracy. A random lunatic who claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine is likely to be wrong. It's possible that devoting equal review time to all claims and all papers would lower the sum value of scientific output. If the volume of scientific material is too great to comprehensively review, from any given observer's standpoint, then a system that relies on identity as a heuristic and is slightly less meritorious may be strictly better than an anonymous system that is slightly more meritorious, for example. Society might have a different goal for the output of the scientific process, which is to maximize the discovery/promotion/publication of useful scientific output - and that is a different goal than judging individual work fairly.

by plg 11y ago

logicallee 11y ago

very good and succinct comment. completely summarizes my reaction.

dalke 11y ago
The paper isn't suggesting 'Anonymous et al. (2002, Nature)' style links. In fact, it addressed that concern directly: > It is suggested that, if using parenthetical referencing, we are not referring to the author(s) any more but to a few title-keywords of the article and do not refer to the journals name. Those title-keywords can replace the authors’ names completely. They can be chosen by the author(s). Taking the APA citation style as an example, citing Nosek and Bar-Anan (2012) could look like this: "...how to change scientific communication (e.g. Opening Scientific Communication, 2012)". The full reference should then be placed in the reference section together with other bibliographies starting with the letter O. The latter can be applied to the Vancouver citation system, too. I happen to think it's not a useful solution, because 1) 'chosen by the author' is a free-text field open to all sorts of ways to hack the system, 2) names are easier to transliterate than titles are to translate, and 3) citations are often not made because of the main topic of the paper but can include also minor points which are later found to be more important. Using the author's name is a more neutral link in that case. (For example, I've seen a paper cited because there's a one line comment about the software used to make an image in the publication. That software became popular, but there was no publication about the software itself, so people cited that first paper instead.)

wyager 11y ago

Not sure how I feel about this idea, but papers could easily be given a UUID.

tjl 11y ago
There's the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) that one has for a paper in digital form.

qrendel 11y ago

So use numerical identifiers, hashes, or PGP keys, in conjunction with a moratorium on outing yourself as the author associated with a certain key before a given length of time has passed, during which the work is vetted.

d0mine 11y ago

Could you elaborate what is your point? For example, if 2000 scientists (that may or may not work together) use "Anonymous et al." name then how anything inside an article will make someone choose a particular scientist's papers from a list of papers in a journal? Obviously, if you're reading an article; you may recognize the work (science is very specialized: if you understand the article; you'll probably recognize the author (the group) even if all references/names are removed anyway -- but you need to read the article). The suggestion doesn't remove all bias but it can remove some. There is no silver bullet that would make people rational.

Pyxl101 11y ago
The authors in their paper propose a different approach to citing articles, which is to cite the article name instead of the author. This criticism, while humorous, is off-base from what's actually being proposed. This is not an example that the authors gave, but you might write something like "On the Origin of Species (1859)" instead. This joke also misses the point in that a follow-up anonymous article would not, to match the author's intent, reference the authorship of previous work. The whole point is for each article to stand on its own, so referencing yourself pseudonymously as the author of a previous article does not achieve the goal. I don't want to be "that guy" who takes the humor too seriously, but I worry from the comments so far that people will conflate the humor and the actual proposal. The overall aim and proposal of the article is to find a way for papers to be judged individually on their own merits, rather than on the merits of their author, the author's institution, the author's nationality, or the paper it was published in. This is a worthwhile goal even if we cannot see a serious means by which to achieve it. To be fair to the jokes, while reading the article I was unsure if it was satire. I'm still not completely sure. I believe the authors are sincere in their belief in anonymity as promoting merit, but I remain unsure whether they think their proposal is realistic, and whether or not they are making some kind of meta-point about the state of scientific review by observing how far away the current review process is from one that would be (as best as we can make it) unbiased. That is to say, upon reading the paper, the idea of implementing their anonymity proposal seems ridiculous - and this realization may be partly the point of the paper, to get the reader to realize how many different points in the editorial process depend on the author's identity rather than the material's merit. It does not strike me as satire, because the work takes itself seriously, but it may seem like satire because of how large the gap is from where we are to a meritorious review system. "Ha! It would be ridiculous for work to be reviewed, published, and promoted purely on its own merit, rather than based on the legacy of the author." On the other hand, it's hard to say how well a fully anonymous system would work. Human biases often serve a useful cognitive function in allowing some filtering operation to be performed more efficiently, albeit with less accuracy. A random lunatic who claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine is likely to be wrong. It's possible that devoting equal review time to all claims and all papers would lower the sum value of scientific output. If the volume of scientific material is too great to comprehensively review, from any given observer's standpoint, then a system that relies on identity as a heuristic and is slightly less meritorious may be strictly better than an anonymous system that is slightly more meritorious, for example. Society might have a different goal for the output of the scientific process, which is to maximize the discovery/promotion/publication of useful scientific output - and that is a different goal than judging individual work fairly.