7 ms·

I think there still definitely needs to be some sort of filter for academic research. Probably not the journal system anymore but something has to replace it, a

by robryan 15y ago

I think there still definitely needs to be some sort of filter for academic research. Probably not the journal system anymore but something has to replace it, as most don't have time to trawl through things of questionable quality in the hope of finding something useful.

jsmcgd 15y ago
The existing academic journals could certify only the works that meet their existing publishing criteria, and charge for this service, whilst making all works freely available. No one is restricted, and everyone knows where to go to avoid having to trawl through the dross themselves.
tzs 15y ago
What I think might be good would be something like this. It's based on the notion that being a good researcher and being good at reading and reviewing research papers are not necessarily the same skill. 1. Have a place for open publication, like arxiv.org, but with a system of non-anonymous commenting and rating. So if someone puts a paper there, others can comment on it and rate it. Ratings could include several categories, such as clarity, importance, rigor, and so on. 2. There should be a system to rate the reviewers. 3. Out of this would emerge a growing collection of reviewers who are recognized as being very good at reviewing papers. 4. Reviewers would start publishing lists of papers they have recently reviewed, broken down by field. 5. Scientists would subscribe to these lists from the top reviewers in their field. 6. Reviewing could become a profession. A researcher who wants to make sure his paper gets attention could pay one or more high rated reviewers to review it. Note that for reviewers it is important to maintain a reputation as an accurate and honest reviewer, which I think would be enough of a safe guard against authors being able to buy good reviews for bad papers.
- impendia 15y ago
  This is a good idea, but I think even something much simpler along these lines would work. If arXiv allowed for signed comments, then famous people could say as little as "This is an interesting paper, and everyone interested in X should read it", and that would do a lot for the reputations of unknown people who are doing good work.

by robryan 15y ago

jsmcgd 15y ago

The existing academic journals could certify only the works that meet their existing publishing criteria, and charge for this service, whilst making all works freely available. No one is restricted, and everyone knows where to go to avoid having to trawl through the dross themselves.

tzs 15y ago

What I think might be good would be something like this. It's based on the notion that being a good researcher and being good at reading and reviewing research papers are not necessarily the same skill. 1. Have a place for open publication, like arxiv.org, but with a system of non-anonymous commenting and rating. So if someone puts a paper there, others can comment on it and rate it. Ratings could include several categories, such as clarity, importance, rigor, and so on. 2. There should be a system to rate the reviewers. 3. Out of this would emerge a growing collection of reviewers who are recognized as being very good at reviewing papers. 4. Reviewers would start publishing lists of papers they have recently reviewed, broken down by field. 5. Scientists would subscribe to these lists from the top reviewers in their field. 6. Reviewing could become a profession. A researcher who wants to make sure his paper gets attention could pay one or more high rated reviewers to review it. Note that for reviewers it is important to maintain a reputation as an accurate and honest reviewer, which I think would be enough of a safe guard against authors being able to buy good reviews for bad papers.

impendia 15y ago
This is a good idea, but I think even something much simpler along these lines would work. If arXiv allowed for signed comments, then famous people could say as little as "This is an interesting paper, and everyone interested in X should read it", and that would do a lot for the reputations of unknown people who are doing good work.