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> Exactly. Journals have sucked for a long time It's funny people are raising their pitch-forks about the journals. I guess it's not widely known/understood th

> Exactly. Journals have sucked for a long time It's funny people are raising their pitch-forks about the journals. I guess it's not widely known/understood that the journals aren't reviewing anything ever. So when I say reviewers I'm talking about PhDs in academia that do this work as "community service". So if peer review is fundamental to the scientific method then your tax dollars are being wasted but the bulk of the waste is on worthless, lazy, BS spouting academics not journal admins. > and practically all of academia just went along because there were no other options. Arxiv has been around for a long time now. Do you really think "the academy" couldn't have come to some consensus on how to allocate review duties for papers that are uploaded/stored/submitted there? The fact that they haven't strongly indicates that lazy ass peer review as orchestrated by the journals is to the benefit of the academy. Journal (and conference) reviewers are completely anonymous and there's absolutely no appeal process (rebuttal phase is BS). Does that sound like a democratic/fair/auditable/meritocracatic setup to you? Sounds like review by inscrutable tribunal to me. So if the process were open/community driven (ie democratic) then people wouldn't be able to hide from the shitty job they do.

sigmoid10 3y ago
I didn't talk about the peer review process (which is indeed not done by the journal and on top of that usually unpaid). I was talking about the journal taking all that money purely for editing and publishing - a service that has become next to worthless in the age of the internet.
thaw13579 3y ago
Beyond this, some reviewers use their position to take advantage of the process to suppress, slow, or preempt work that overlaps or disagrees with their own. The journal editors are supposed to police this kind of thing, but they are similarly providing a community service that is lacking quality.
- mathisfun123 3y ago
  > slow, or preempt work that overlaps or disagrees with their own. No doubt - past two papers I've submitted I can basically deanonymize my reviewers based on the other papers/projects they insist my work is inferior to.
wizzwizz4 3y ago
> your tax dollars are being wasted but the bulk of waste is on worthless, lazy, BS spouting academics Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't peer review usually volunteer work? With the job of the (usually paid) editors to select reviewers with a track record of basic competence. > Do you really think "the academy" couldn't have come to some consensus on how to allocate review duties for papers that are uploaded/stored/submitted there? Actually, there are several proposals! One such system is https://openreview.net/about https://openreview.net/about – it's not the first I've seen, but it's the most recent. (I first learned about these things from a fictional proposal in a Pokémon fanwork: it's far from the realm of niche.) > Journal (and conference) reviewers are completely anonymous To reduce the incentives for nepotistic anti-scientific behaviour. The system's flawed, sure, but it works how it does for a reason.
- mathisfun123 3y ago
  > with a track record of basic competence. You need to ask yourself how that track record is constituted ie what metrics decide basic competence. Hint: it's not anything that resembles an objective measure of ability or diligence or literally anything. Another hint: it's *extremely* common for PIs to pawn review duties off on grad students - I review papers for my advisor all the time and I have been since my first year. > To reduce the incentives for nepotistic anti-scientific behaviour. This is the thin veil that everyone hides behind to cover up the greater harm of inscrutability^1; everyone knows what everyone else is working on in any field. At this point in my career (I'm towards the end of my PhD) I could tell you which group wrote the paper (if it's in my area) just by reading the abstract. And if you're thinking to yourself well what about new entrants into the field? There's no such thing - you do not learn XYZ hyper niche thing without being part of a long lineage of forebears doing XYZ thing. And if it does so somehow happen, like a student is doing something completely different from their advisor and so they're not trying to publish in familiar venues, well guess what they get face looooong odds getting their work accepted (ask me how I know :) ^1 Like come to think of it, recently I've been reading that the conservative judges on SCOTUS think proceedings should be closed. And you could make some sort of similar nepotism case about that, or some other conflict of interest type thing (in favor of closing the proceedings) but we all recognize that fundamental to a free and fair process is that it's open and auditable.

sigmoid10 3y ago

I didn't talk about the peer review process (which is indeed not done by the journal and on top of that usually unpaid). I was talking about the journal taking all that money purely for editing and publishing - a service that has become next to worthless in the age of the internet.

thaw13579 3y ago

Beyond this, some reviewers use their position to take advantage of the process to suppress, slow, or preempt work that overlaps or disagrees with their own. The journal editors are supposed to police this kind of thing, but they are similarly providing a community service that is lacking quality.

mathisfun123 3y ago
> slow, or preempt work that overlaps or disagrees with their own. No doubt - past two papers I've submitted I can basically deanonymize my reviewers based on the other papers/projects they insist my work is inferior to.

wizzwizz4 3y ago

> your tax dollars are being wasted but the bulk of waste is on worthless, lazy, BS spouting academics Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't peer review usually volunteer work? With the job of the (usually paid) editors to select reviewers with a track record of basic competence. > Do you really think "the academy" couldn't have come to some consensus on how to allocate review duties for papers that are uploaded/stored/submitted there? Actually, there are several proposals! One such system is https://openreview.net/about https://openreview.net/about – it's not the first I've seen, but it's the most recent. (I first learned about these things from a fictional proposal in a Pokémon fanwork: it's far from the realm of niche.) > Journal (and conference) reviewers are completely anonymous To reduce the incentives for nepotistic anti-scientific behaviour. The system's flawed, sure, but it works how it does for a reason.

mathisfun123 3y ago
> with a track record of basic competence. You need to ask yourself how that track record is constituted ie what metrics decide basic competence. Hint: it's not anything that resembles an objective measure of ability or diligence or literally anything. Another hint: it's *extremely* common for PIs to pawn review duties off on grad students - I review papers for my advisor all the time and I have been since my first year. > To reduce the incentives for nepotistic anti-scientific behaviour. This is the thin veil that everyone hides behind to cover up the greater harm of inscrutability^1; everyone knows what everyone else is working on in any field. At this point in my career (I'm towards the end of my PhD) I could tell you which group wrote the paper (if it's in my area) just by reading the abstract. And if you're thinking to yourself well what about new entrants into the field? There's no such thing - you do not learn XYZ hyper niche thing without being part of a long lineage of forebears doing XYZ thing. And if it does so somehow happen, like a student is doing something completely different from their advisor and so they're not trying to publish in familiar venues, well guess what they get face looooong odds getting their work accepted (ask me how I know :) ^1 Like come to think of it, recently I've been reading that the conservative judges on SCOTUS think proceedings should be closed. And you could make some sort of similar nepotism case about that, or some other conflict of interest type thing (in favor of closing the proceedings) but we all recognize that fundamental to a free and fair process is that it's open and auditable.