4 ms·
Except if you and your friend have the same area of expertise. I'd actually think that's more likely. These fields are super specialized.
by sjg007 5y ago
Except if you and your friend have the same area of expertise. I'd actually think that's more likely. These fields are super specialized.
- munk-a 5y agoYea, I think this is likely a pretty big issue with highly specialized field - there can be an issue with new participants breaking into the field (due to an entrenched old boys club) along with a difficulty getting enough sample data specific to that corner of academia. I wonder if we could randomly assign reviewers but allow the reviewers to self-report a level of familiarity on the subject matter in general (ideally in advance) and on the paper topic in particular.
- cg563 5y agoPeople can also cheat on this self-reported familiarity right? On specialized areas I don't see a solution, the colluders might as well be the only experts in the field so you have to enlist them no matter what. But from the description this doesn't seem like what's happening. "The colluders hide conflicts of interest, then bid to review these papers, sometimes from duplicate accounts, in an attempt to be assigned to these papers as reviewers."
- munk-a 5y agoI think that by involving randomness before any active self-selection you wouldn't necessarily involve specialty-wide clusters but you'd make it a lot harder to actively seek out the documents you want to review. It might also help to attack the ability to create duplicate accounts. Given how relatively few professors exist in the world I'd assume you could put a lot more effort into duplicate account detection than they are right now.