4 ms·
I think the key is that peer review is a promise of an n=2 process. There's no promise that an unreviewed pre-print is going to get two constructive readers. I
by Fomite 3y ago
I think the key is that peer review is a promise of an n=2 process.
There's no promise that an unreviewed pre-print is going to get two constructive readers. It's also wildly subject to bias - being on a pre-print with a junior, female researcher was eye opening as to the merits of double blind review.
- eru 3y agoYou could blind the pre-print process, too?
- Fomite 3y agoI've not seen a major attempt to blind pre-prints, and given you have to remove some identifying information for blinding, I think that would be a tall order.
- eru 3y agoWhy would that be a tall-order? Seems fairly simple and straight-forward, doesn't it? You'd set up a server where people have accounts, but publishing pre-prints is anonymous by default, and identities can be revealed later. In the current peer review system, people already have to produce papers with those identifiers removed. They can do exactly the same in the pre-print world, can't they?
- Fomite 3y agoA great many papers in my field contain contextual details about the settings the studies were conducted in that would effectively deblind them. That sort of betrays the idea of a pre-print, in my opinion, because they should not depend on "Someday we'll come back and fix this".
- eru 3y agoHow does conventional peer review work for those papers?