5 ms·
While it's hard to believe, there are entire fields where top journals can take 2 years to publish (no early publications, no culture of preprints, etc.) For ex
by shas3 10y ago
While it's hard to believe, there are entire fields where top journals can take 2 years to publish (no early publications, no culture of preprints, etc.) For example, in one subfield of EE where I once worked in mid oughts, the choice ws between an IEEE journal that took 2.5-4 yrs to publish or lesser known IET and online journals that published faster.
Such fields are few in 2017. But it's not implausible that in 2014 the only two quick forums in statistics he was aware of were Arxiv and lesser known journals.
- sdenton4 10y agoThe great thing about the arxiv, though, is that you can submit the preprint early while the paper goes through review at a 'real' journal. Review takes time... Unless you submit to your own journal... I'm surprised good friend didn't help with a better choice of journal, even a non top tier one.
- Xcelerate 10y agoThere's entire trails of papers that cite each other on arXiv while they wait for a 1-2 year review for journal publication. It's crazy — the journal has in some regards become a formality necessary for career advancement, while the actual research in a field progresses in the form of postings on a preprint server.
- a_bonobo 10y ago> the journal has in some regards become a formality necessary for career advancement, I think this is ever so slowly going away - the entire format of the journal is still a hangover from a print-only era and really needs to go away. There are some good news: the NIH (medicine's US funding body) now allows preprints to be cited in grant proposals, one nail in the coffin of journals. See http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/nih-enables-investigators-include-draft-preprints-grant-proposals http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/nih-enables-investiga...
- ma2rten 10y agoAre you saying that journals are going away in favor of unpeer reviewed preprints? That seems like a big step backwards.
- dagss 10y agoIt is a step forwards. The important thing is to get rid of the journals, then new evaluation systems can rise from the ashes. The peer review is letting more and more crap through anyway.
- adrianN 10y agoPeer review mostly guarantees that the paper is not ridiculously wrong. It's a pretty small hurdle to clear and whether or not a paper passes peer review depends mostly on the mood of the reviewers. I have received completely contradictory reviews for the same paper.
- ma2rten 10y agoDepends on the venue you publish in. One side effect of getting rid of peer reviews is that you need another indicator if a paper is worth reading, most of the time that's going to be author reputation. This means it's difficult for work from lesser known authors to get noticed (similarly to what happened here).
- MaysonL 10y agoThe willingness to cite a preprint would seem in and of itself to be a form of peer review, no?