3 ms·

I completely agree with you and this is a significant issue, because it makes it hard for someone not from one of the established places to get research attenti

I completely agree with you and this is a significant issue, because it makes it hard for someone not from one of the established places to get research attention. I would also argue that with the increased importance of the (mostly) commercial "high-impact" journals this has become worse. I know that some of the professional (non-expert) editors of these journals specifically look at the citation counts of authors before accepting to send them out to review, because their main aim is to get people reading the articles, not necessarily good science.

geraltofrivia 5y ago
This is objectively worse. Commercial journals need to be bygone. I feel that the publishing venues in the field of machine learning are a great example of non commercial, (relatively) transparent, open access publications. Look at ICLR, ICML, ACL, NeurIPS, for instance. All of their proceedings are open access. Most papers their are available on arXiv as well (which has its pros and cons both that I'd rather not get into here). Many of them also have an open review process wherein the reviewers post their reviews for all to see in a forum like interface, allowing frequent back and forth with the authors. In the best case, its more akin to assist the authors refine their potentially sound findings, a dynamic process where the paper may get revised a couple times before acceptance. I believe journals need to adapt the openreview process. There are obvious parallels in the lifecycle of a journal submission (from submission to acceptance) and the openreview process, except that the latter is accelerated (for better or for worse).
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Yes, the cloud that the large commercial journals have over the academic process is really worrying. A publication in Nature can mean the difference between tenure and no tenure or getting a grant or no grant. I have to say that I find the review process of the copernicus journals very interesting. You can see a description here: [1]. Unfortunately I don't work in a related field otherwise I would have published there already. [1] https://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/peer_review/interactive_review_process.html https://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/peer_revie...

geraltofrivia 5y ago

This is objectively worse. Commercial journals need to be bygone. I feel that the publishing venues in the field of machine learning are a great example of non commercial, (relatively) transparent, open access publications. Look at ICLR, ICML, ACL, NeurIPS, for instance. All of their proceedings are open access. Most papers their are available on arXiv as well (which has its pros and cons both that I'd rather not get into here). Many of them also have an open review process wherein the reviewers post their reviews for all to see in a forum like interface, allowing frequent back and forth with the authors. In the best case, its more akin to assist the authors refine their potentially sound findings, a dynamic process where the paper may get revised a couple times before acceptance. I believe journals need to adapt the openreview process. There are obvious parallels in the lifecycle of a journal submission (from submission to acceptance) and the openreview process, except that the latter is accelerated (for better or for worse).

cycomanic 5y ago
Yes, the cloud that the large commercial journals have over the academic process is really worrying. A publication in Nature can mean the difference between tenure and no tenure or getting a grant or no grant. I have to say that I find the review process of the copernicus journals very interesting. You can see a description here: [1]. Unfortunately I don't work in a related field otherwise I would have published there already. [1] https://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/peer_review/interactive_review_process.html https://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/peer_revie...