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AI research is experimenting organically with ways to identify important papers (everything gets published on arxiv.org, but that's far from a replacement). A n

AI research is experimenting organically with ways to identify important papers (everything gets published on arxiv.org, but that's far from a replacement). A new system is more likely to emerge from all this experimentation than to be invented in whole. Conferences play a large role, and automated tools like arxiv-sanity.com and Google Scholar (for mapping citations) help. Even Twitter is important, if a major figure tweets about a paper, many people will read it. Conferences are experimenting with models to reduce the lag time from submissions and trying different systems for selecting papers. We'll see where it goes.

ksk 10y ago
Well, all of those things you mentioned are voluntary, optional and not guaranteed. I think having people whose job it is to peer-review, be selective, be vigilant of bad-science, etc is a good thing. I'm completely for open-access, but I'm against having zero selection criteria. It puts a drag of everyone if they have to wade through thousands of junk papers while doing research. If hacker news did not have a voting system/flagging system/banning system it would just be a giant cesspool of links and comments submitted by bots.
- zaphos 10y ago
  No one's job is to peer review for established journals. Peer review is unpaid.
  - ksk 10y ago
    To your point, yes, there are plenty of journals that don't pay (but pay for other activities). Perhaps I should have just called it a fee instead of a job. Here are some that do pay - http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20930/ http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20930/
    - zaphos 10y ago
      Interesting link! I wasn't aware of anyone paying for peer review when I was in academia. It appears from the linked examples that it's still rare and relatively small dollar amounts, so indeed not a job. I love the example of the New England Journal of Medicine finding that paying $5 was worse than not paying, as potential reviewers found it insulting. As to other activities, yes, I think companies behind journals typically pay people to do administrative functions for the journal, and the editor may or may not be paid (for Nature, I believe the editor is paid). However, it is possible to replicate the traditional review structure in a completely free OA journal with volunteered resources; in computer graphics, I think JCGT does this: http://jcgt.org/about.html http://jcgt.org/about.html
- nonbel 10y ago
  >"It puts a drag of everyone if they have to wade through thousands of junk papers while doing research." If something that sounds interesting was published in Nature/Science around 2000, I will usually just skip it. I already know the methods section will be crap and I will be unable to figure out what process generated the data (at least in the case of biomed). When I needed to dig through that stuff and try to make sense of what was going on in detail, that was an awful nightmare. And that was an editorial policy... now they at least let authors put the required info into supplements. I think that was the era of "peak peer review", the idea has been losing clout ever since (mostly due to the internet).

ksk 10y ago

Well, all of those things you mentioned are voluntary, optional and not guaranteed. I think having people whose job it is to peer-review, be selective, be vigilant of bad-science, etc is a good thing. I'm completely for open-access, but I'm against having zero selection criteria. It puts a drag of everyone if they have to wade through thousands of junk papers while doing research. If hacker news did not have a voting system/flagging system/banning system it would just be a giant cesspool of links and comments submitted by bots.

zaphos 10y ago
No one's job is to peer review for established journals. Peer review is unpaid.
- ksk 10y ago
  To your point, yes, there are plenty of journals that don't pay (but pay for other activities). Perhaps I should have just called it a fee instead of a job. Here are some that do pay - http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20930/ http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20930/
  - zaphos 10y ago
    Interesting link! I wasn't aware of anyone paying for peer review when I was in academia. It appears from the linked examples that it's still rare and relatively small dollar amounts, so indeed not a job. I love the example of the New England Journal of Medicine finding that paying $5 was worse than not paying, as potential reviewers found it insulting. As to other activities, yes, I think companies behind journals typically pay people to do administrative functions for the journal, and the editor may or may not be paid (for Nature, I believe the editor is paid). However, it is possible to replicate the traditional review structure in a completely free OA journal with volunteered resources; in computer graphics, I think JCGT does this: http://jcgt.org/about.html http://jcgt.org/about.html
nonbel 10y ago
>"It puts a drag of everyone if they have to wade through thousands of junk papers while doing research." If something that sounds interesting was published in Nature/Science around 2000, I will usually just skip it. I already know the methods section will be crap and I will be unable to figure out what process generated the data (at least in the case of biomed). When I needed to dig through that stuff and try to make sense of what was going on in detail, that was an awful nightmare. And that was an editorial policy... now they at least let authors put the required info into supplements. I think that was the era of "peak peer review", the idea has been losing clout ever since (mostly due to the internet).