3 ms·

You are right. It is often a problem that established competitors get to review articles that contradict their work and, unsurprisingly, try to sabotage them. I

by nextos 3y ago

You are right. It is often a problem that established competitors get to review articles that contradict their work and, unsurprisingly, try to sabotage them. Incentives are not well aligned. A good mid-ground is something like the non-profit journal ELife, where articles are accepted by an editor and published before review, then reviewed publicly by selected reviewers. Very transparant, and also leaves room for article updates. See the whole process here: https://elifesciences.org/about/peer-review https://elifesciences.org/about/peer-review.

adastra22 3y ago
That’s a better system. But why involve the journal in review at all? Journals should go back to just publishing papers and any unsolicited letter-to-the-editor reviews, reproductions, or commentary they receive in response. Why add a burden of unpaid work reviewing every single paper that comes through?
- nextos 3y ago
  I believe ELife may eventually get deeper paid reviews. That is a reason to involve the journal in this process. The way reviews at ELife work can be seen as solicited letter-to-the editor reviews, as these do not influence the outcome. Your article is already published.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    Maybe I'm not explaining my point very well. I think the fact that some papers don't get reviewed, even post-publication, is a feature not a bug. Otherwise it starts to present an unnecessary and damaging hurdle to publication, even if the reviews are post-publication because it is an implicit promise of future work. A proper scientific journal is an efficient clearinghouse for information, in the same way that Hacker News is an efficient clearinghouse for tech news and commentary. Journal editors play the role of dang in this setup, applying a minimal but necessary amount of moderation and editorial decisions. But imagine if you weren't allowed to post a comment to HN unless you first lined up 2-3 high-karma individuals to provide a thoughtful reply. No doubt the result would be high quality discussion, but there'd only be a handful of comments on even front-page posts, and I suspect that the overall value of the site would be vastly less than the present HN. There should be as few as possible editorial hurdles to clear in order to publish in a journal, e.g. one of the co-authors having published in the journal before or being sponsored by a respected person in the field. And the review that occurs before publication should consist of (1) spellchecks and such, and (2) formatting. This is how science worked for hundreds of years, and there's no reason we can't continue operating this way now that journal page lengths are a non-issue. (I'm not a reactionary though. I'd like to improve upon the old format in many ways. In particular I'd want journals to provide specific support for publishing reproductions of existing work or 3rd party submitted supporting documents, and much better methods for retracting or correcting a paper.)

by nextos 3y ago

adastra22 3y ago

That’s a better system. But why involve the journal in review at all? Journals should go back to just publishing papers and any unsolicited letter-to-the-editor reviews, reproductions, or commentary they receive in response. Why add a burden of unpaid work reviewing every single paper that comes through?

nextos 3y ago
I believe ELife may eventually get deeper paid reviews. That is a reason to involve the journal in this process. The way reviews at ELife work can be seen as solicited letter-to-the editor reviews, as these do not influence the outcome. Your article is already published.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Maybe I'm not explaining my point very well. I think the fact that some papers don't get reviewed, even post-publication, is a feature not a bug. Otherwise it starts to present an unnecessary and damaging hurdle to publication, even if the reviews are post-publication because it is an implicit promise of future work. A proper scientific journal is an efficient clearinghouse for information, in the same way that Hacker News is an efficient clearinghouse for tech news and commentary. Journal editors play the role of dang in this setup, applying a minimal but necessary amount of moderation and editorial decisions. But imagine if you weren't allowed to post a comment to HN unless you first lined up 2-3 high-karma individuals to provide a thoughtful reply. No doubt the result would be high quality discussion, but there'd only be a handful of comments on even front-page posts, and I suspect that the overall value of the site would be vastly less than the present HN. There should be as few as possible editorial hurdles to clear in order to publish in a journal, e.g. one of the co-authors having published in the journal before or being sponsored by a respected person in the field. And the review that occurs before publication should consist of (1) spellchecks and such, and (2) formatting. This is how science worked for hundreds of years, and there's no reason we can't continue operating this way now that journal page lengths are a non-issue. (I'm not a reactionary though. I'd like to improve upon the old format in many ways. In particular I'd want journals to provide specific support for publishing reproductions of existing work or 3rd party submitted supporting documents, and much better methods for retracting or correcting a paper.)