4 ms·
Slowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with public code repositories like gith
by cs702 5y ago
Slowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with public code repositories like github and gitlab, are becoming or maybe already are the world's most important academic "journals."
All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. Reviews take place over the Internet via both public and private forums.
Gatekeeping power lies more and more in the hands of a global, distributed scientific community open to anyone willing and capable of doing and reviewing the work. It's fabulous IMHO.
- SQueeeeeL 5y agoIf you want to have to read 5,000 poorly written error riddled works to find a single gem I guess it's okay. Unfortunately, I'm not an immortal
- ajkjk 5y agoIt's really much better than that. At least for the subfields I've followed.
- mdp2021 5y agoThen we will also have to find a decentralized rating/sorting system that works. Finally. ( = Let us devise it for the publications, then let us export it to the many, uttermostly crucial, contexts that can use it).
- beowulfey 5y agoGood thing you aren’t the only one looking!
- kekebo 5y agoGithub stars / number of forks can act as coarse initial quality indicators for foss, why not for academic papers?
- sxg 5y agoThe current publication system doesn't necessarily avoid that problem either. Many papers are accepted due to the prestige of certain authors and conformity to other papers in the same field. Filters like these can lead to a false sense of security in the quality of the work.
- dcolkitt 5y agoI much prefer a system where connected insiders push through un-replicatable papers in an opaque quid pro quo system so they can pad each others' tenure committee packets!
- wolverine876 5y ago> All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. What is the basis for all these claims? Who is giving it the quick once-over? Crowd-sourced review and information, despite some strengths and high initial hopes, has a record of extraordinary misinformation and disinformation. Why would we want to use that system for scientific research? I prefer careful peer review, standards for announcing funders, etc.
- treesprite82 5y ago> Who is giving it the quick once-over? arXiv has 200 expert moderators spread through different fields to filter out papers that are blatantly misleading, unoriginal, non-substantive, or in need of significant review and revision. It's not a peer-review, but it's not a complete free-for-all either.
- wolverine876 5y agoThanks! I will look that up (but if you happen to have any links ...).
- gzer0 5y agoHere you go! [1] https://arxiv.org/moderators/ https://arxiv.org/moderators/ [2] https://arxiv.org/help/moderation https://arxiv.org/help/moderation
- wolverine876 5y agoThank you. And I found this one too: https://blog.arxiv.org/2019/08/29/our-moderation-process/ https://blog.arxiv.org/2019/08/29/our-moderation-process/
- light_hue_1 5y agoThis is completely false! Please stop telling people that arXiv moderators judge the technical content of papers. That's not their role and it leads to people trusting arXiv when they should not. It's a complete-free-for-all. arXiv moderators do not judge the technical content. They don't filter misleading submissions. They don't filter work in need of revision. This is literally described on the arXiv website: https://arxiv.org/help/moderation https://arxiv.org/help/moderation "What policies guide moderation before public announcement? " They filter spammers, check for total obvious nutjobs ("My grilled cheese said P=NP"), for crazy formatting, for blatant copyright violations. Publishing junk on arXiv is trivial if you're not too crazy and know a little bit how to use the right words. You can publish anything.
- sfgweilr4f 5y agoI'm idly curious: does arxiv show who reviewed it? credentials etc? Is there a trust scoring mechanism or some such? is there some way to show a graph of reviewing? Is there a restriction on who can post a paper? (I'm not saying any of these are needed to make it "respectable" or even that they should be... just wondering how arxiv does its thing) Personally I like the overall concept of arxiv. Even with no one necessarily reviewing a paper, which is probably unlikely, the fact its even accessible for later review when necessary is worthwhile.
- tempay 5y agoAs far as I know the moderator isn’t shown, but that’s probably a good thing as things get approved on a ~overnight schedule so publicly shaming them for mistakes seems counter productive. Additionally the moderation is very light, “April fools” papers are common and I’ve never heard of something being rejected. For submitting you need to be approved by someone who already has several submissions in that field.
- Vinnl 5y agoSpeaking of which, if anyone knows someone at arXiv, would be great if you could prod someone to get back to me about this PR or the associated email I sent them about it: https://github.com/arXiv/arxiv-browse/pull/197 https://github.com/arXiv/arxiv-browse/pull/197 It would add the ability for people to state that they have reviewed a given work. Might not be the direction they want to go in, or it might not be - but so far I'm not even sure if someone's seen it, unfortunately.