4 ms·

can we move to post-publication peer review now? Pre-publication peer review, most of the time, marginally improves a manuscript at the cost ~6 months. Some ti

can we move to post-publication peer review now? Pre-publication peer review, most of the time, marginally improves a manuscript at the cost ~6 months. Some times it's just a place for reviewers to vent off stress and punch down. The real corkers get weeded out by the editors before the paper goes out to review.

tgv 4y ago
I agree that it's wrong when peer reviewers abuse their position (and they certainly do), but pre-publication review keeps the number of publications down, which once was necessary: a journal has a limited number of pages. You could argue that is a thing of the past, but imagine every article being published. We're already drowning in a sea of mostly wrong articles.
- a_bonobo 4y ago
  over the past 5-10 years my field biology has embraced preprints, with some famous papers remaining as preprints (most famously, I'd say, is the BWA-MEM paper). Most preprints I see are of decent quality, certainly higher than what gets published in MDPI et al. Every article is already getting published and the world hasn't ended yet :)
  - akasakahakada 4y ago
    Increasing number of researchers ar e now citing papers directly from arxiv instead of some xxx society or xxx university journal.
- akasakahakada 4y ago
  Sorry but science community need more papers indeed. For example only successful novel results are being published, but not those others who are doing validation jobs. Although some are frauds, but their theory is new, they get passed. No one bother to test the theory because no journal will accept such boring validation paper. Last thing to mention is that the count of pages do not matter. It is not an excuse to refuse to publish great work from scientist.
- toss1 4y ago
  At this point, it seems best to lose the illusion that peer review produces any consistent or meaningful floor on academic paper quality. Better to have an acknowledged reality that, until some time has passed with legitimate comments, updates, and ideally reproduction, the published papers are to be regarded with full skepticism.
return_to_monke 4y ago
that would sadly hurt more, I think. Journals are eager to publish new studies as facts (did you know that eating sugar will make you lose weight???) (ignoring that all those who were studied were pro byciclers burning off 3000 calories a day) this will just make it worse, because a bit larger amount of bad papers will get publushed

tgv 4y ago

I agree that it's wrong when peer reviewers abuse their position (and they certainly do), but pre-publication review keeps the number of publications down, which once was necessary: a journal has a limited number of pages. You could argue that is a thing of the past, but imagine every article being published. We're already drowning in a sea of mostly wrong articles.

a_bonobo 4y ago
over the past 5-10 years my field biology has embraced preprints, with some famous papers remaining as preprints (most famously, I'd say, is the BWA-MEM paper). Most preprints I see are of decent quality, certainly higher than what gets published in MDPI et al. Every article is already getting published and the world hasn't ended yet :)
- akasakahakada 4y ago
  Increasing number of researchers ar e now citing papers directly from arxiv instead of some xxx society or xxx university journal.
akasakahakada 4y ago
Sorry but science community need more papers indeed. For example only successful novel results are being published, but not those others who are doing validation jobs. Although some are frauds, but their theory is new, they get passed. No one bother to test the theory because no journal will accept such boring validation paper. Last thing to mention is that the count of pages do not matter. It is not an excuse to refuse to publish great work from scientist.
toss1 4y ago
At this point, it seems best to lose the illusion that peer review produces any consistent or meaningful floor on academic paper quality. Better to have an acknowledged reality that, until some time has passed with legitimate comments, updates, and ideally reproduction, the published papers are to be regarded with full skepticism.

return_to_monke 4y ago

that would sadly hurt more, I think. Journals are eager to publish new studies as facts (did you know that eating sugar will make you lose weight???) (ignoring that all those who were studied were pro byciclers burning off 3000 calories a day) this will just make it worse, because a bit larger amount of bad papers will get publushed