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>What am I missing about the benefits of the status quo keep it so entrenched? The entrenchment is due to perceived (and cultivated) prestige, less so about ta

>What am I missing about the benefits of the status quo keep it so entrenched? The entrenchment is due to perceived (and cultivated) prestige, less so about tangible benefits. Prestigious journals have good brand value, they spend money cultivating it and they extract earnings from it. Researchers and administrators trade on journal brand value for career advancements. They benefit from a highly prestige-stratified journal catalog as a tool for differentiating themselves from their peers, it's much easier to justify a promotion based on 'X publications to prestigious journal A, B, C' than 'bunch of people in the community think this is a great result', especially to a non-expert.

xtracto 8y ago
This is good for blockchain... In all seriousness, I have always thought that Blockchain could pose a good solution for the issue of peer-reviewing scientific papers. It provides a descentralized infrastructure with "tokens" that can be transferred to provide "prestige" to papers and authors.
- blocked_again 8y ago
  Why not use a centralized karma system like hacker news does?
  - arthur_pryor 8y ago
    because then you wouldn't get a chance to say "blockchain"
    - SpeciesInvader 8y ago
      You could call it hn blockchain, but only if you paint it mauve...
- arthur_pryor 8y ago
  ...right, but then you have to figure out explicit metrics for determining what "prestige" is, and you have to explicitly implement the mechanics of it. i think this is a worthwhile research project of its own (or many research projects). but the mapping is very much non-trivial. i think the amount that people complain about how poorly the usual social media ontology ("friends", "likes", etc) maps to the "real"-world equivalent shows that this isn't something were you can just be like "we'll implement a first-pass of the blockchain thing now, and we'll refine the granularity of our prestige tokens later". thanks, but no thanks. which is all to say, like so many of the things people want to use a block chain for, the hard part is the politics and the real-world nuance, not the immutable ledger. the immutable ledger is not trivial. but compared to the other stuff, it's not all that hard (and is certainly more solved, at this point).
- drb91 8y ago
  Well, I’m not sure about “prestige”; it seems like another arbitrary metric to be gamed. However, I would like to easily see a non-political db where you can easily track the paper graph to figure out which papers are based on discredited research and/or researchers taking money from special interest groups.
  - namibj 8y ago
    Any (specific) idea how to get to that data? I might be interested in including this with some other, more general information-flow model{s,ing}. This part seems like making it publicly available would be a good thing, and possibly necessary, and likely aligned with the goals a likely choice of organization to host/maintain the technology would have.
  - arthur_pryor 8y ago
    i'm moderately hopeful that we'll get that sort of querying for free* as the semantic web matures, and we can better query federated linked data. university libraries are pretty keen on making that dream a reality (and this is the sort of use-case that makes them want to be able to do that, though they'd probably pitch the rosier version, where they show the indirect impact of a well-regarded paper or study, because that sells better than the doom-n-gloom version described here, even if that version is just as important). * or if not "free", a very small marginal cost, in terms of say data aggregation and programming effort
- ngold 8y ago
  Instead of prestige it would be nice to see successful replications.
  - rocqua 8y ago
    That works for experimental stuff, but a lot of work is theoretical. Consider most of mathematics or theoretical physics. There is no real replication here. Instead, the test is strong peer review, combined with publication to a wider audience. Similar issues occur for review articles, which are about analyzing data already present rather than analyzing new data. Moreover, this would also hurt actual replications. It kind of seems like being the last to replicate something would be without compensation.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  You should cite "A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology". Abstract here: http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/3/19 http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/3/19
  - Iv 8y ago
    I think this is one of the rare cases where blockchains can actually provide good values: we could potentially get third parties of trust eventually to make a blockchain unnecessary but for now, the established parties are unethical and entrenched. I hope this publication gets an implementation soon.
    - cannotbenull 8y ago
      There are already serveral projects trying to solving these problems.(https://pluto.network https://pluto.network)
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  I don't follow. What problem would blockchain be solving here that couldn't be solved without it?
Iv 8y ago
I still think that "Journal of the MIT AI lab" or "Tokyo University Official Journal" would have no problem in establishing prestige if they were to try it.
- williamscales 8y ago
  I think you're probably right. However, I wonder what sort of retaliation the first institution to do this might face from publishers. The publishing industry will have a mighty incentive to kill it and they tend to play hardball.
  - practice9 8y ago
    Unless some sort of millionaire / billionaire (Thiel / Musk / Bezos, i.e. one of guys the hated by HN, just kidding) will be behind this open-source journal.

xtracto 8y ago

This is good for blockchain... In all seriousness, I have always thought that Blockchain could pose a good solution for the issue of peer-reviewing scientific papers. It provides a descentralized infrastructure with "tokens" that can be transferred to provide "prestige" to papers and authors.

blocked_again 8y ago
Why not use a centralized karma system like hacker news does?
- arthur_pryor 8y ago
  because then you wouldn't get a chance to say "blockchain"
  - SpeciesInvader 8y ago
    You could call it hn blockchain, but only if you paint it mauve...
arthur_pryor 8y ago
...right, but then you have to figure out explicit metrics for determining what "prestige" is, and you have to explicitly implement the mechanics of it. i think this is a worthwhile research project of its own (or many research projects). but the mapping is very much non-trivial. i think the amount that people complain about how poorly the usual social media ontology ("friends", "likes", etc) maps to the "real"-world equivalent shows that this isn't something were you can just be like "we'll implement a first-pass of the blockchain thing now, and we'll refine the granularity of our prestige tokens later". thanks, but no thanks. which is all to say, like so many of the things people want to use a block chain for, the hard part is the politics and the real-world nuance, not the immutable ledger. the immutable ledger is not trivial. but compared to the other stuff, it's not all that hard (and is certainly more solved, at this point).
drb91 8y ago
Well, I’m not sure about “prestige”; it seems like another arbitrary metric to be gamed. However, I would like to easily see a non-political db where you can easily track the paper graph to figure out which papers are based on discredited research and/or researchers taking money from special interest groups.
- namibj 8y ago
  Any (specific) idea how to get to that data? I might be interested in including this with some other, more general information-flow model{s,ing}. This part seems like making it publicly available would be a good thing, and possibly necessary, and likely aligned with the goals a likely choice of organization to host/maintain the technology would have.
- arthur_pryor 8y ago
  i'm moderately hopeful that we'll get that sort of querying for free* as the semantic web matures, and we can better query federated linked data. university libraries are pretty keen on making that dream a reality (and this is the sort of use-case that makes them want to be able to do that, though they'd probably pitch the rosier version, where they show the indirect impact of a well-regarded paper or study, because that sells better than the doom-n-gloom version described here, even if that version is just as important). * or if not "free", a very small marginal cost, in terms of say data aggregation and programming effort
ngold 8y ago
Instead of prestige it would be nice to see successful replications.
- rocqua 8y ago
  That works for experimental stuff, but a lot of work is theoretical. Consider most of mathematics or theoretical physics. There is no real replication here. Instead, the test is strong peer review, combined with publication to a wider audience. Similar issues occur for review articles, which are about analyzing data already present rather than analyzing new data. Moreover, this would also hurt actual replications. It kind of seems like being the last to replicate something would be without compensation.
sanxiyn 8y ago
You should cite "A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology". Abstract here: http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/3/19 http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/3/19
- Iv 8y ago
  I think this is one of the rare cases where blockchains can actually provide good values: we could potentially get third parties of trust eventually to make a blockchain unnecessary but for now, the established parties are unethical and entrenched. I hope this publication gets an implementation soon.
  - cannotbenull 8y ago
    There are already serveral projects trying to solving these problems.(https://pluto.network https://pluto.network)
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
I don't follow. What problem would blockchain be solving here that couldn't be solved without it?

Iv 8y ago

I still think that "Journal of the MIT AI lab" or "Tokyo University Official Journal" would have no problem in establishing prestige if they were to try it.

williamscales 8y ago
I think you're probably right. However, I wonder what sort of retaliation the first institution to do this might face from publishers. The publishing industry will have a mighty incentive to kill it and they tend to play hardball.
- practice9 8y ago
  Unless some sort of millionaire / billionaire (Thiel / Musk / Bezos, i.e. one of guys the hated by HN, just kidding) will be behind this open-source journal.