4 ms·

> However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published. So, why would you want "proper" peer review nowadays? It should be a means to achieve something else

> However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published. So, why would you want "proper" peer review nowadays? It should be a means to achieve something else. Just for the challenge? I mean besides arXiv there are many ways you can get your knowledge out there if you want to give people free (or even paid) access to it. This will also create a lot of Feedback if it's the least bit interesting. If you want your knowledge to generate new products and companies you will also find that Startups nowadays don't wait for peer review before they launch. So the only practical reason I can see is if you want to get funding. And Then you use the funding to create more papers. To… well… get more funding. TL;DR: If you think about that you want to have "proper" peer review meaybe you should spend some time thinking about what you actually want to achieve and if there aren't better ways to get there.

mcguire 8y ago
Absolutely. None of the modern advancements in knowledge and understanding involve the waste of time known as "peer-review". See http://timecube.2enp.com/ http://timecube.2enp.com/.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  We know peer review is unnecessary for quality and progress in science because it only became a standard after WWII. Einstein published one peer reviewed paper. There are multiple fields that have routed around peer review; everything that works on preprints and working papers. It takes more than two years to get an Economics paper published. If it took that long for things to get eyeballs progress would be exceedingly slow. Peer review may have some good points but it certainly isn’t necessary to modern advancements in knowledge and understanding.
  - dijksterhuis 8y ago
    That one economics paper, as an example, could have made one seemingly innocuous assumption that might be overlooked by later work. Let's say a paper that relies on the preprint take that assumption for granted. And then another paper references that one. And again. And again. Then the fifth paper gets adopted by a government in some esoteric policy, which causes their economy to implode. May not be necessary to just publish "stuff", but it is necessary to mitigate against the dangers of invalid assumptions.
    - SAS_80sTrash 8y ago
      I agree with you. Assumptions will cause a person to fail a sociology class because the majority of them are factually incorrect and anything that has the potential to cause negative consequence should be thoroughly examined before being published as valid, but if it is just an idea or a thought then I would personally write the idea as a question and send the question to those in current research.
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      Peer Review has not stopped the situationyou describe from occurring in multiple fields. Social Psychology is particularly bad but cancer biology isn’t great either. ——- Why Most Published Research Findings Are False https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... Bayer and Amgen, reported dismal results when they tried to reproduce some cancer papers. Only 25 percent of the papers Bayer examined were reproduced. Amgen was able to replicate only six out of the 53 studies it examined. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/510304871/what-does-it-mean-when-cancer-findings-cant-be-reproduced https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/5103048... Plan to replicate 50 high-impact cancer papers shrinks to just 18 An ambitious project that set out nearly 5 years ago to replicate experiments from 50 high-impact cancer biology papers, but gradually shrank that number, now expects to complete just 18 studies. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/plan-replicate-50-high-impact-cancer-papers-shrinks-just-18 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/plan-replicate-50-hi...
dijksterhuis 8y ago
Something ridiculous like 90% of arXiv papers get lost in the sheer volume of submissions - 90% of it could be wrong (that's a made up number, sue me). Just like flat earth or anti-vaxer theories on YouTube, incorrectly published work could be damaging and dangerous. Getting peer-reviewed & published legitimizes the research work. It has been verified by a panel of experts. Good for those start ups. I can't wait to attack all their Deep Learning APIs [1]. [1] https://openai.com/blog/adversarial-example-research/ https://openai.com/blog/adversarial-example-research/
Vinnl 8y ago
"Proper" peer review could mean formal peer review which, indeed, has a lot of flaws. In the context of OP, however, just having any academic look at it and suggest improvements would probably already be a huge boon, regardless of potential funding or challenge: it achieves better knowledge discovery. Either form of peer review is pretty hard to obtain through arXiv.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> So, why would you want "proper" peer review nowadays? Because I want other people to help catch my mistakes. Why wouldn't you want that?
- p1esk 8y ago
  Just send your results or ideas to someone knowledgeable about the topic and ask their opinion.
  - srouhaewaehy 8y ago
    This. If you work in the field you know the 10-100 people who provide most expertise and you can build trust relationships with them by delivering interesting thoughts and then get their feedback on These ideas. That's the healthy approach. And if you work hard and the stuff you do is reasonable you will also become known in these circles. Also technology can help weed out the complete b.s., see HN or Stackoverflow for examples on that.
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      But this is what peer review is - sending it to the people in my field for their feedback. It’s just set up formally so you don’t need to ask everyone individually and there is (an attempt at) the feedback being blind so that people who are unpopular don’t get penalised.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    That’s literally what peer review is - but set up as a system to make it easier on everyone.
    - p1esk 8y ago
      No it's not. Peer review is often done by people have have no clue about what you're doing. And even if they do, not many are motivated to make effort to provide a good review. Source: I received comments from 4 reviewers for my last paper, and not a single one provided any useful feedback (paper's accepted). Two of them simply copy-pasted sentences from the abstract and called it a day.

mcguire 8y ago

Absolutely. None of the modern advancements in knowledge and understanding involve the waste of time known as "peer-review". See http://timecube.2enp.com/ http://timecube.2enp.com/.

barry-cotter 8y ago
We know peer review is unnecessary for quality and progress in science because it only became a standard after WWII. Einstein published one peer reviewed paper. There are multiple fields that have routed around peer review; everything that works on preprints and working papers. It takes more than two years to get an Economics paper published. If it took that long for things to get eyeballs progress would be exceedingly slow. Peer review may have some good points but it certainly isn’t necessary to modern advancements in knowledge and understanding.
- dijksterhuis 8y ago
  That one economics paper, as an example, could have made one seemingly innocuous assumption that might be overlooked by later work. Let's say a paper that relies on the preprint take that assumption for granted. And then another paper references that one. And again. And again. Then the fifth paper gets adopted by a government in some esoteric policy, which causes their economy to implode. May not be necessary to just publish "stuff", but it is necessary to mitigate against the dangers of invalid assumptions.
  - SAS_80sTrash 8y ago
    I agree with you. Assumptions will cause a person to fail a sociology class because the majority of them are factually incorrect and anything that has the potential to cause negative consequence should be thoroughly examined before being published as valid, but if it is just an idea or a thought then I would personally write the idea as a question and send the question to those in current research.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Peer Review has not stopped the situationyou describe from occurring in multiple fields. Social Psychology is particularly bad but cancer biology isn’t great either. ——- Why Most Published Research Findings Are False https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... Bayer and Amgen, reported dismal results when they tried to reproduce some cancer papers. Only 25 percent of the papers Bayer examined were reproduced. Amgen was able to replicate only six out of the 53 studies it examined. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/510304871/what-does-it-mean-when-cancer-findings-cant-be-reproduced https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/5103048... Plan to replicate 50 high-impact cancer papers shrinks to just 18 An ambitious project that set out nearly 5 years ago to replicate experiments from 50 high-impact cancer biology papers, but gradually shrank that number, now expects to complete just 18 studies. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/plan-replicate-50-high-impact-cancer-papers-shrinks-just-18 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/plan-replicate-50-hi...

dijksterhuis 8y ago

Something ridiculous like 90% of arXiv papers get lost in the sheer volume of submissions - 90% of it could be wrong (that's a made up number, sue me). Just like flat earth or anti-vaxer theories on YouTube, incorrectly published work could be damaging and dangerous. Getting peer-reviewed & published legitimizes the research work. It has been verified by a panel of experts. Good for those start ups. I can't wait to attack all their Deep Learning APIs [1]. [1] https://openai.com/blog/adversarial-example-research/ https://openai.com/blog/adversarial-example-research/

Vinnl 8y ago

"Proper" peer review could mean formal peer review which, indeed, has a lot of flaws. In the context of OP, however, just having any academic look at it and suggest improvements would probably already be a huge boon, regardless of potential funding or challenge: it achieves better knowledge discovery. Either form of peer review is pretty hard to obtain through arXiv.

chrisseaton 8y ago

> So, why would you want "proper" peer review nowadays? Because I want other people to help catch my mistakes. Why wouldn't you want that?

p1esk 8y ago
Just send your results or ideas to someone knowledgeable about the topic and ask their opinion.
- srouhaewaehy 8y ago
  This. If you work in the field you know the 10-100 people who provide most expertise and you can build trust relationships with them by delivering interesting thoughts and then get their feedback on These ideas. That's the healthy approach. And if you work hard and the stuff you do is reasonable you will also become known in these circles. Also technology can help weed out the complete b.s., see HN or Stackoverflow for examples on that.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    But this is what peer review is - sending it to the people in my field for their feedback. It’s just set up formally so you don’t need to ask everyone individually and there is (an attempt at) the feedback being blind so that people who are unpopular don’t get penalised.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  That’s literally what peer review is - but set up as a system to make it easier on everyone.
  - p1esk 8y ago
    No it's not. Peer review is often done by people have have no clue about what you're doing. And even if they do, not many are motivated to make effort to provide a good review. Source: I received comments from 4 reviewers for my last paper, and not a single one provided any useful feedback (paper's accepted). Two of them simply copy-pasted sentences from the abstract and called it a day.