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"As a frequent reader of papers in CS I'm of the opinion that peer review is accomplishing very little outside of checking theoretical results with proofs that

"As a frequent reader of papers in CS I'm of the opinion that peer review is accomplishing very little outside of checking theoretical results with proofs that can be vetted." As a frequent reader and reviewer of CS papers I totally disagree. Peer review helps narrow a huge incoming flood of new research into a smaller stream of results that are the most novel, important, and correct. Without explicit review, your options would be to either waste your time wading through the mess or use reviews from sources whose advice you consider on an ad hoc basis. I'm sure there are better systems that take advantage of the Internet, the wisdom of crowds, data aggregation and mining, etc. The current system of peer review does adequately perform a major service, though.

bmastenbrook 16y ago
Given the huge number of niche conferences and journals out there, is the filtering that takes place actually useful? I'm not convinced of it. I've engaged in venue shopping myself. Meanwhile useful, novel work is published in the open every day and my brain hasn't collapsed from the inrush of poorly filtered information. I run across junk, but I find published junk too. At least the former usually has the decency to not waste my time with a bunch of academic boilerplate language and a page of barely relevant citations.
- ohmygodel 16y ago
  Niche venues cater to specialists in an area. Even in specialized areas there is more output than an expert can keep up with, and these smaller venues generally perform valuable filtering as well. "my brain hasn't collapsed from the inrush of poorly filtered information" Of course not. However, you are either wasting a ton of time or you are using some other indirect method to decide what papers are useful to read. I'd love to hear if you think your personal approach to filtering non-reviewed content is superior to relying on peer review.
  - bmastenbrook 16y ago
    Once again, I'm not convinced the specialists are actually filtering usefully instead of juat defining the boundaries of their niche. You've assumed that the non-reviewed content I'm reading is in the form of papers. It isn't; it's blog posts and code.
d0mine 16y ago
The internet by itself can play role of the peer review system. For example, github is a much better medium to publish a work that needs to be examined (reproduced) than any paper journal.

bmastenbrook 16y ago

Given the huge number of niche conferences and journals out there, is the filtering that takes place actually useful? I'm not convinced of it. I've engaged in venue shopping myself. Meanwhile useful, novel work is published in the open every day and my brain hasn't collapsed from the inrush of poorly filtered information. I run across junk, but I find published junk too. At least the former usually has the decency to not waste my time with a bunch of academic boilerplate language and a page of barely relevant citations.

ohmygodel 16y ago
Niche venues cater to specialists in an area. Even in specialized areas there is more output than an expert can keep up with, and these smaller venues generally perform valuable filtering as well. "my brain hasn't collapsed from the inrush of poorly filtered information" Of course not. However, you are either wasting a ton of time or you are using some other indirect method to decide what papers are useful to read. I'd love to hear if you think your personal approach to filtering non-reviewed content is superior to relying on peer review.
- bmastenbrook 16y ago
  Once again, I'm not convinced the specialists are actually filtering usefully instead of juat defining the boundaries of their niche. You've assumed that the non-reviewed content I'm reading is in the form of papers. It isn't; it's blog posts and code.

d0mine 16y ago

The internet by itself can play role of the peer review system. For example, github is a much better medium to publish a work that needs to be examined (reproduced) than any paper journal.