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A better model would be something like what the Real-World Haskell book used when it was under development: allow comments (anonymous or otherwise) on each para

by copper 15y ago

A better model would be something like what the Real-World Haskell book used when it was under development: allow comments (anonymous or otherwise) on each paragraph, and refine the content based on those comments. Of course, this does have the twin problems that it doesn't keep results private, and makes credit assignment a real pain :) Even with all the problems it has, I actually prefer peer-review right now. Some of the stuff that gets self-published on arXiv is of sketchy quality, and there's just no quick way of figuring that out by just reading the abstract if a 'known' person hasn't co-authored it.

_delirium 15y ago
In physics at least, a substantial proportion of peer-review goes via arXiv first anyway, so it's not really an either-or. In many cases, the real peer-review happens when people see a new paper in their area on arXiv, they send in comments or challenges, etc. to the authors, and in the best case, by the time a journal article is submitted for formal peer review, many of the relevant peers have already reviewed and helped improve it. Some mathematicians have also gotten pretty active in using blogs and wikis for peer review and even actively doing research. I don't expect journals to go away, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there are some areas of the sciences where they become more of a formal archival service: where papers go to be filed on shelves once the real action/review/dissemination has already happened.
- copper 15y ago
  fwiw, that's true for cs and stat, and I assume for math too. What I refer to is something like this: http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/AND+AND+ti:+riemann+ti:+hypothesis+ti:+proof/0/1/0/all/0/1 http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/AND+AND+ti:+riemann+ti:+hypothes... This is a particularly egregious example; but if I'm looking for something on a different subject where I don't know some of the notable researchers, or don't know what I'm looking for, it would take me a lot more time than I'd like to spend to filter out the more interesting papers.
Estragon 15y ago
> allow comments (anonymous or otherwise) on each > paragraph, and refine the content based on those > comments. PLoSOne uses this model.

by copper 15y ago

_delirium 15y ago

In physics at least, a substantial proportion of peer-review goes via arXiv first anyway, so it's not really an either-or. In many cases, the real peer-review happens when people see a new paper in their area on arXiv, they send in comments or challenges, etc. to the authors, and in the best case, by the time a journal article is submitted for formal peer review, many of the relevant peers have already reviewed and helped improve it. Some mathematicians have also gotten pretty active in using blogs and wikis for peer review and even actively doing research. I don't expect journals to go away, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there are some areas of the sciences where they become more of a formal archival service: where papers go to be filed on shelves once the real action/review/dissemination has already happened.

copper 15y ago
fwiw, that's true for cs and stat, and I assume for math too. What I refer to is something like this: http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/AND+AND+ti:+riemann+ti:+hypothesis+ti:+proof/0/1/0/all/0/1 http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/AND+AND+ti:+riemann+ti:+hypothes... This is a particularly egregious example; but if I'm looking for something on a different subject where I don't know some of the notable researchers, or don't know what I'm looking for, it would take me a lot more time than I'd like to spend to filter out the more interesting papers.

Estragon 15y ago

> allow comments (anonymous or otherwise) on each > paragraph, and refine the content based on those > comments. PLoSOne uses this model.