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What makes you think so? If it has been mentioned here or in the linked blog I’ve missed that. Still, if it should be so obvious to any casual observer that th

by kgwgk 8y ago

What makes you think so? If it has been mentioned here or in the linked blog I’ve missed that. Still, if it should be so obvious to any casual observer that the paper doesn’t belong in that journal: how did that escape the journal’s founder and editor-in-chief? (Maybe Rivin was also impersonating Steinberger!)

tptacek 8y ago
I don't know, but Steinberger stepped down due to a medical crisis sometime during this drama (it's hard to fix timelines because Hill waited a long time to write this Quillette post). I don't know exactly where I got the impression that Rivin was the person who got this paper fast-tracked, but I think probably somewhere on Joel Fish's Twitter timeline. As I understand it: NYJM is an online-only journal that continually adds papers to each "volume", so it's not like a typical refereed journal where there's a cohort of submissions and a calendar during which the whole peer review committee downselects submissions. You couldn't, for instance, easily fast-track a Usenix paper into a conference proceedings without blowing up the program committee. And, again: you can just look at NYJM and then at this paper and see immediately that it didn't go through peer review. It is unlikely any paper I've found in NYJM for several years back. There are practicing mathematicians on this thread saying the same thing; Tim Gowers also says as much in the blog post we're commenting on.
- kgwgk 8y ago
  > the whole peer review committee What do you mean? Do you expect the whole editorial board to review every paper? I think it’s usual for acceptance to be decided by one editor, based on the report from referees (in the case of the NYJM, one referee). Peer review is provided by the external referee(s), not by the journal editors (but they can also act as reviewers for submissions handled by another editor, I guess it depends on the journal’s policy).
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I've been a part of the program committees for a couple scholarly journal editions over the past two decades and in none of them were individual reviewers given the ability to accept or decline papers. At Usenix a few years ago, the practice was that everybody reviewed everything, and the program chairs (I was one) essentially counted votes and managed discussions. That was also the impression I got doing this for an ACM/IEEE journal in the early 2000s. (It is, for whatever it's worth to you, also essentially the practice at Black Hat USA, which gets thousands of submissions every year --- albeit the review board is separated out into tracks with their own covering reviewers. But BH Cryptography, for instance, has 10 cryptographer reviewers, and they reviewed everything on the track). Can I ask, from where did you get the impression that it was typical for an individual member of a review board to get assigned a paper and pass/fail it, or for any one review board member to have the authority to accept a paper?
    - kgwgk 8y ago
      See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131 https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131
      - tptacek 8y ago
        From that article: Editors normally invite more than one reviewer to evaluate a scientific manuscript.
        kgwgk 8y ago
        As I said, it may be one of the members of the editorial board that acts as editor, sends the paper to the peer reviewers (only one in the case of the NYJM) and decides to accept or reject the paper (or ask for revisions) based on their report. Even if there were two referees instead of one, they are usually external and not members of the editorial board. And you could still believe that no peer review was done or suspect that both referees were the handling editor himself. Apparently in this case the final decision is taken by the editor-in-chief. Other academic journals may have other policies and maybe in some cases the whole editorial board is involved in every publication but I don’t think it’s usual.

by kgwgk 8y ago

tptacek 8y ago

I don't know, but Steinberger stepped down due to a medical crisis sometime during this drama (it's hard to fix timelines because Hill waited a long time to write this Quillette post). I don't know exactly where I got the impression that Rivin was the person who got this paper fast-tracked, but I think probably somewhere on Joel Fish's Twitter timeline. As I understand it: NYJM is an online-only journal that continually adds papers to each "volume", so it's not like a typical refereed journal where there's a cohort of submissions and a calendar during which the whole peer review committee downselects submissions. You couldn't, for instance, easily fast-track a Usenix paper into a conference proceedings without blowing up the program committee. And, again: you can just look at NYJM and then at this paper and see immediately that it didn't go through peer review. It is unlikely any paper I've found in NYJM for several years back. There are practicing mathematicians on this thread saying the same thing; Tim Gowers also says as much in the blog post we're commenting on.

kgwgk 8y ago
> the whole peer review committee What do you mean? Do you expect the whole editorial board to review every paper? I think it’s usual for acceptance to be decided by one editor, based on the report from referees (in the case of the NYJM, one referee). Peer review is provided by the external referee(s), not by the journal editors (but they can also act as reviewers for submissions handled by another editor, I guess it depends on the journal’s policy).
- tptacek 8y ago
  I've been a part of the program committees for a couple scholarly journal editions over the past two decades and in none of them were individual reviewers given the ability to accept or decline papers. At Usenix a few years ago, the practice was that everybody reviewed everything, and the program chairs (I was one) essentially counted votes and managed discussions. That was also the impression I got doing this for an ACM/IEEE journal in the early 2000s. (It is, for whatever it's worth to you, also essentially the practice at Black Hat USA, which gets thousands of submissions every year --- albeit the review board is separated out into tracks with their own covering reviewers. But BH Cryptography, for instance, has 10 cryptographer reviewers, and they reviewed everything on the track). Can I ask, from where did you get the impression that it was typical for an individual member of a review board to get assigned a paper and pass/fail it, or for any one review board member to have the authority to accept a paper?
  - kgwgk 8y ago
    See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131 https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131
    - tptacek 8y ago
      From that article: Editors normally invite more than one reviewer to evaluate a scientific manuscript.
      - kgwgk 8y ago
        As I said, it may be one of the members of the editorial board that acts as editor, sends the paper to the peer reviewers (only one in the case of the NYJM) and decides to accept or reject the paper (or ask for revisions) based on their report. Even if there were two referees instead of one, they are usually external and not members of the editorial board. And you could still believe that no peer review was done or suspect that both referees were the handling editor himself. Apparently in this case the final decision is taken by the editor-in-chief. Other academic journals may have other policies and maybe in some cases the whole editorial board is involved in every publication but I don’t think it’s usual.