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[Note: I am the author of the original article, so I have a horse in this race.] I agree that the journal system provides a valuable filter. My beef is not wi

[Note: I am the author of the original article, so I have a horse in this race.] I agree that the journal system provides a valuable filter. My beef is not with journal, but with locking up publicly funded research. Open-access journals are an unequivocal good. But I am not convinced that all journals filter on the right things. I like the approach of PLoS ONE (http://www.plosone.org/ http://www.plosone.org/), which assesses papers purely on the quality of the science, and ignores subjective notions of "impact" or "importance". The result is that everything they publish is good -- as reliable as articles published in any other journal -- but it includes articles that would never get into, say, Science or Nature due to the self-consciously super-selective approach those journals take. Anyway, that's a side-issue. The real issue is that, whatever selection criteria a journal uses, it should make the resulting papers freely available to the citizens who funded them.

incremental 15y ago
Everything PLoS ONE publishes is good because they are less selective than the top tier journals? Seems an extraordinary claim to make.
- jbri 15y ago
  No, everything PLoS ONE publishes is good because they reject everything that isn't good. The "less selective" bit manifests itself as a reduced average "impact"/"importance", rather than as a reduced average quality.
  - MikeTaylor 15y ago
    Exactly. Paradoxically, this policy has resulted in its getting a rather good impact factor for such a new journal (4.411 for 2010), which happily attracts more high-profile submissions in a virtuous circle. The moral seems clear: other things being equal, freely accessible papers tend to get cited more often than paywalled ones. (Who would have guessed?)
- MikeTaylor 15y ago
  Perhaps I wasn't clear. Everything PLoS ONE publishes is good not because they are less selective, but although they are less selective. The reason their acceptance criteria don't adversely affect the quality of their published articles is because they do select on quality -- if it's not good, it doesn't go in. But they don't select on impact.
  - incremental 15y ago
    Ah, my mistake, I see what you're claiming. However, let me ask a more substantive question. You end by stating:"The real issue is that, whatever selection criteria a journal uses, it should make the resulting papers freely available to the citizens who funded them." The OA model largely involves shifting the cost from the user to the author. This will be paid out of the authors grant money, which in many cases is publicly funded as well. It's not at all clear to me that the end effect is as different as the proponents claim. Reminds me a bit of how Google uses "open" as a competitive weapon to push Android. I wonder if OA publishers are not doing the same to push their business model...
    - jules 15y ago
      What exactly are those costs? Reviewers work for free. The only other thing that's needed is a web application and some hosting. These costs are negligible compared to the tax that closed journals are imposing on the scientific world.
      - incremental 15y ago
        I don't really know the details. But consider what open access journals charge per article: http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php This is not cheap, and I'm very glad I didn't need to cover this back when I was publishing papers. If anyone knows a good article on the detailed economics I'd love to see it.
      - alttag 15y ago
        At a premier journal in my field, a "managing editor" is paid for the 25+ hours/wk of work assigning submissions out to the SEs/AEs (based on area of focus), and—more importantly—following up with them on their progress. As I understand, he's also responsible for managing itineraries and speaking engagements for the editor-in-chief, who travels regularly evangelizing (and getting feedback on) the top journal in our field. We have a couple of EICs for major journals at our school, and I suspect (but do not know for certain) that the journal subsidizes their conference attendance too, so that the journal's senior editorial staff can meet in person at least annually. My point is: don't constrain your cost focus to just distribution. There's more to running any organization than initially meets the eye.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Not less selective, less judgemental.
xtracto 15y ago
>but it includes articles that would never get into, say, Science or Nature due to the self-consciously super-selective approach those journals take I think the main issue of "traditional" journals is that they are artificially constrained to publish 10 to 15 articles per month (or issue), whereas electronic publication can get rid of this constrain (as long as they have enough peer reviewers).
jpdoctor 15y ago
>which assesses papers purely on the quality of the science Mike, 1. Thank you for taking up the cause. 2. Trust me: Boycotting reviews is easy in my case. Unfortunately, this means no change because I stopped doing them -- it was just taking too much time for no reward. 3. wrt the above quote: I note that there is a market for selective journals. Much like reddit and HN, it is useful to have a crowd-source selection of interesting/important items. (Yes things get missed, but S/N is much higher than if I had to do it from scratch. Good luck.
- streptomycin 15y ago
  > there is a market for selective journals. Much like reddit and HN, it is useful to have a crowd-source selection of interesting/important items. We don't need journals for that. They could be replaced by services like http://f1000.com/ http://f1000.com/
  - jpdoctor 15y ago
    I was more envisioning a reddit/HN segmented by science/engineering disciplines. In the current journal system, editor-votes have absolute veto power, and reviewer votes have large upvote power. This has led to much progress, but it is unclear that it is the best system possible. Then there is the whole segmentation question, which is a big tradeoff between S/N and coverage of the space. An example: Physical Review A, B, C, D & E used to be one journal -- Physical Review. Phys Rev had a green binder, and people would keep these dead-tree objects on shelves for reference. Well, the publication volume kept growing: Some wag calculated that rate of growth of the volumes on the shelf would cause their edge to exceed the speed of light. (He also pointed out that no information would be exchanged, so there was no violation of physics.)
    - MikeTaylor 15y ago
      Interesting idea to use something like a subreddit as a place to communally filter ("post-publication peer-review") published papers. The problem is, you wouldn't want one-man-one-vote. You'd want established professionals in the field to have a greater upvote/downvote weight than J. Random Ligger. You could imagine a sort of pagerankish scheme where people whose own publications have been upvoted get more more voting power as a result.

incremental 15y ago

Everything PLoS ONE publishes is good because they are less selective than the top tier journals? Seems an extraordinary claim to make.

jbri 15y ago
No, everything PLoS ONE publishes is good because they reject everything that isn't good. The "less selective" bit manifests itself as a reduced average "impact"/"importance", rather than as a reduced average quality.
- MikeTaylor 15y ago
  Exactly. Paradoxically, this policy has resulted in its getting a rather good impact factor for such a new journal (4.411 for 2010), which happily attracts more high-profile submissions in a virtuous circle. The moral seems clear: other things being equal, freely accessible papers tend to get cited more often than paywalled ones. (Who would have guessed?)
MikeTaylor 15y ago
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Everything PLoS ONE publishes is good not because they are less selective, but although they are less selective. The reason their acceptance criteria don't adversely affect the quality of their published articles is because they do select on quality -- if it's not good, it doesn't go in. But they don't select on impact.
- incremental 15y ago
  Ah, my mistake, I see what you're claiming. However, let me ask a more substantive question. You end by stating:"The real issue is that, whatever selection criteria a journal uses, it should make the resulting papers freely available to the citizens who funded them." The OA model largely involves shifting the cost from the user to the author. This will be paid out of the authors grant money, which in many cases is publicly funded as well. It's not at all clear to me that the end effect is as different as the proponents claim. Reminds me a bit of how Google uses "open" as a competitive weapon to push Android. I wonder if OA publishers are not doing the same to push their business model...
  - jules 15y ago
    What exactly are those costs? Reviewers work for free. The only other thing that's needed is a web application and some hosting. These costs are negligible compared to the tax that closed journals are imposing on the scientific world.
    - incremental 15y ago
      I don't really know the details. But consider what open access journals charge per article: http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php This is not cheap, and I'm very glad I didn't need to cover this back when I was publishing papers. If anyone knows a good article on the detailed economics I'd love to see it.
    - alttag 15y ago
      At a premier journal in my field, a "managing editor" is paid for the 25+ hours/wk of work assigning submissions out to the SEs/AEs (based on area of focus), and—more importantly—following up with them on their progress. As I understand, he's also responsible for managing itineraries and speaking engagements for the editor-in-chief, who travels regularly evangelizing (and getting feedback on) the top journal in our field. We have a couple of EICs for major journals at our school, and I suspect (but do not know for certain) that the journal subsidizes their conference attendance too, so that the journal's senior editorial staff can meet in person at least annually. My point is: don't constrain your cost focus to just distribution. There's more to running any organization than initially meets the eye.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Not less selective, less judgemental.

xtracto 15y ago

>but it includes articles that would never get into, say, Science or Nature due to the self-consciously super-selective approach those journals take I think the main issue of "traditional" journals is that they are artificially constrained to publish 10 to 15 articles per month (or issue), whereas electronic publication can get rid of this constrain (as long as they have enough peer reviewers).

jpdoctor 15y ago

>which assesses papers purely on the quality of the science Mike, 1. Thank you for taking up the cause. 2. Trust me: Boycotting reviews is easy in my case. Unfortunately, this means no change because I stopped doing them -- it was just taking too much time for no reward. 3. wrt the above quote: I note that there is a market for selective journals. Much like reddit and HN, it is useful to have a crowd-source selection of interesting/important items. (Yes things get missed, but S/N is much higher than if I had to do it from scratch. Good luck.

streptomycin 15y ago
> there is a market for selective journals. Much like reddit and HN, it is useful to have a crowd-source selection of interesting/important items. We don't need journals for that. They could be replaced by services like http://f1000.com/ http://f1000.com/
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  I was more envisioning a reddit/HN segmented by science/engineering disciplines. In the current journal system, editor-votes have absolute veto power, and reviewer votes have large upvote power. This has led to much progress, but it is unclear that it is the best system possible. Then there is the whole segmentation question, which is a big tradeoff between S/N and coverage of the space. An example: Physical Review A, B, C, D & E used to be one journal -- Physical Review. Phys Rev had a green binder, and people would keep these dead-tree objects on shelves for reference. Well, the publication volume kept growing: Some wag calculated that rate of growth of the volumes on the shelf would cause their edge to exceed the speed of light. (He also pointed out that no information would be exchanged, so there was no violation of physics.)
  - MikeTaylor 15y ago
    Interesting idea to use something like a subreddit as a place to communally filter ("post-publication peer-review") published papers. The problem is, you wouldn't want one-man-one-vote. You'd want established professionals in the field to have a greater upvote/downvote weight than J. Random Ligger. You could imagine a sort of pagerankish scheme where people whose own publications have been upvoted get more more voting power as a result.