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Because reviewing is difficult, time consuming and, if you want anonimity of the reviewer, needs a third party to select the reviewer and coordinate the operati
by cfn 5y ago
Because reviewing is difficult, time consuming and, if you want anonimity of the reviewer, needs a third party to select the reviewer and coordinate the operation. I am not sure if most people are aware but peer reviewing is not paid. The journals that charge for access to the papers only do coordination and publishing (which is vanishngly cheap these days). All the work is done by the authors and the reviewers and they get nil from that pile of money.
Peer review worked (mostly) when most researchers had tenure in an university or research institution and volume was low. They were able to manage their time and allocate the necessary to that function. The situation now is that journals spray and pray review requests' emails to anyone who has ever published a paper regardless of their position or even if their work is related. This is a consequence of the volume and the mess that research positions are where the focus is on grants, money and power with science a distant fourth.
- danuker 5y ago> anonymity of the reviewer I review my colleague's code every week. Yet it seems they are not out to get me and actually thank me for the feedback. Why doesn't the same apply to scientific research? Why do reviewers want to be anonymous?
- endominus 5y agoDifferent incentives, I assume? Otherwise, it would be easier to form insular groups promoting questionable science, especially in the softer sciences. Tit-for-tat reviewing, promotion through citations, etc. While programmers (in companies with well-run engineering environments) are incentivized and rewarded for reviewing code, a group of them can't just form a cabal that mindlessly "approves" of each other's shitcode for long without someone finding out none of it actually works. The same is not true of a lot of science. See; 5-HTTLPR [0] Just a guess; I'm not plugged into the environment. [0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-rev... is a good run-down of the controversy. TL;DR, a seratonin transporter gene was suspected to be involved in basically every mental issue and hundreds of papers were published in agreement. All of them are basically bullshit.