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>how about a model like stackoverflow? papers are published like questions, and reviews are the answers. readers upvote good papers and good reviews, so that th
by jasode 8y ago
>how about a model like stackoverflow? papers are published like questions, and reviews are the answers. readers upvote good papers and good reviews, so that the most upvoted and most reviewed papers float to the top.
The problem is that long-form works that require substantial analysis by experts (such as scientific papers read by competent scientists) don't work for a voting system like Stackoverflow. Internet voting works on things like comments of HN but not for 20000 word papers.
(I made previous comments about the limitations of voting systems to vet academic papers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15269673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15269673)
Basically, scientists are humans and human nature says they won't log into a system to upvote/downvote papers. Instead, they want a stronger signal than karma points before they spend (or potentially waste) their precious time on analyzing the merits of a long paper. That stronger signal is another respectable scientists that asks them to look at it.
- em-bee 8y agoright. votes would just be for the general popupation, to show which papers are popular. if votes are used at all. scientists would focus on actual reviews and citations. the only challenge i see is how we motivate people to write reviews. perhaps as some sort of a trade. for every paper uploaded you are expected to review 3 other papers. so that each paper can get at least 3 reviews. there is also a potential for making a difference between public and private reviews. private reviews would be like prepublishing reviews now, and public reviews like opinions about a paper after it's published.
- admax88q 8y ago> right. votes would just be for the general popupation, to show which papers are popular. if votes are used at all. The last thing we want is the general public voting on scientific research. Any results that don't fit their world view will be voted down.