4 ms·

As it happens, I'm building "Github for Journals". I pivoted away from attempting a crowd source review approach with a reputation system to trying to support

As it happens, I'm building "Github for Journals". I pivoted away from attempting a crowd source review approach with a reputation system to trying to support journals in going Diamond Open Access. But the platform I've built supports co-author collaboration, preprints and preprint review, journal publishing flows, and post publication review - all in a continuous flow that utilizes an interface drawing from Github PRs and Google Docs. You can submit a paper, collect feedback from co-authors, then submit it as a preprint and collect preprint feedback, then submit to a journal and run the journal review process, then collect feedback on the final published paper. And you can manage multiple versions of the paper, collecting review rounds on each version, through that whole process. It's in alpha, I'm pushing really hard with a short runway to get the journal flows to usable beta while trying to raise seed funding... the catch being I feel very strongly that it needs to be non-profit, so seed funding here is grants and donations. I'm looking for journal editors who want to participate in UX research. I'm also interested in talking to folks who run preprint servers to see if they'd have any interest in using the platform. If you (being any reader) know any, or have leads for funding, reach out: dbingham@theroadgoeson.com

cpncrunch 3y ago
When you say "submit to a journal" does that mean you are not a journal? Why operate as a preprint server, but not offer to publish with peer-review? (Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your comment).
- dbingham 3y ago
  The platform is intended to host many journals in the same way Github hosts many open source projects. And to facilitate interactions, conversation, and collaboration among authors, editors, and reviewers across them.
- sxg 3y ago
  It doesn't sound like that poster operates as a journal, and that makes sense. Academic researchers need to publish papers in long-standing and highly respected journals in order to be promoted and eventually gain tenure. Journals do not add value by simply providing space for researchers to publish their work—they add value by existing as a reputable brand that can endow select researchers with academic and social credit.
  - cpncrunch 3y ago
    As mentioned in my other comment, crappy peer-review is a big problem for most journals, so a solution to that needs to be found.
    - dbingham 3y ago
      Yeah, before I pivoted to trying to flip journals, I spent a year exploring crowd sourcing with an eye on improving peer review. After building a beta and collecting a bunch of user feedback, my conclusion is that academics on the whole aren't ready to crowd source. Journal editors are still necessary facilitators and community organizers. So that lead to exploring flips. However, I think there's a lot that software can do to nudge towards better peer review. And once we have journals using a platform we can build lots of experimental features and make them easy to use and adopt to work towards improving it. I've kept crowd sourcing preprint review in the platform - though I removed the reputation system since UX research suggested it was an active deterrent to people using the platform - to enable continued experimentation with it. And the platform makes it easy for preprint review to flow naturally into journal review and for the two to live comfortably alongside each other. The idea being that this should help enable people to experiment with preprint review with out having to take a risk by giving up journal publishing. And the platform has crowdsourced post-publication review as well. My thought is that if we can get the journals using the platform, that will get authors and reviewers in the platform and since preprint and post-publish review are really easy to do in the platform that will drastically increase the usage of both forms of review. Then folks can do metascience on all of the above and compare the three forms to see which is most effective. Hopefully that can then spur movement to better review. I also want to do work to ensure all the artifacts (data, supplementary material, etc) of the paper live alongside it and are easily accessed during review. And work to better encourage, rewards, and recognize replications. I think there's a lot we can explore once we have a large portion of the scholarly community using a single platform. The trick is getting there.

cpncrunch 3y ago

When you say "submit to a journal" does that mean you are not a journal? Why operate as a preprint server, but not offer to publish with peer-review? (Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your comment).

dbingham 3y ago
The platform is intended to host many journals in the same way Github hosts many open source projects. And to facilitate interactions, conversation, and collaboration among authors, editors, and reviewers across them.
sxg 3y ago
It doesn't sound like that poster operates as a journal, and that makes sense. Academic researchers need to publish papers in long-standing and highly respected journals in order to be promoted and eventually gain tenure. Journals do not add value by simply providing space for researchers to publish their work—they add value by existing as a reputable brand that can endow select researchers with academic and social credit.
- cpncrunch 3y ago
  As mentioned in my other comment, crappy peer-review is a big problem for most journals, so a solution to that needs to be found.
  - dbingham 3y ago
    Yeah, before I pivoted to trying to flip journals, I spent a year exploring crowd sourcing with an eye on improving peer review. After building a beta and collecting a bunch of user feedback, my conclusion is that academics on the whole aren't ready to crowd source. Journal editors are still necessary facilitators and community organizers. So that lead to exploring flips. However, I think there's a lot that software can do to nudge towards better peer review. And once we have journals using a platform we can build lots of experimental features and make them easy to use and adopt to work towards improving it. I've kept crowd sourcing preprint review in the platform - though I removed the reputation system since UX research suggested it was an active deterrent to people using the platform - to enable continued experimentation with it. And the platform makes it easy for preprint review to flow naturally into journal review and for the two to live comfortably alongside each other. The idea being that this should help enable people to experiment with preprint review with out having to take a risk by giving up journal publishing. And the platform has crowdsourced post-publication review as well. My thought is that if we can get the journals using the platform, that will get authors and reviewers in the platform and since preprint and post-publish review are really easy to do in the platform that will drastically increase the usage of both forms of review. Then folks can do metascience on all of the above and compare the three forms to see which is most effective. Hopefully that can then spur movement to better review. I also want to do work to ensure all the artifacts (data, supplementary material, etc) of the paper live alongside it and are easily accessed during review. And work to better encourage, rewards, and recognize replications. I think there's a lot we can explore once we have a large portion of the scholarly community using a single platform. The trick is getting there.