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I agree. Journals have been publishing "responses" for ages, so there always has been a "comment section" of sorts. But it could be so much easier! Personally

by dguest 2y ago

I agree. Journals have been publishing "responses" for ages, so there always has been a "comment section" of sorts. But it could be so much easier! Personally I haven't really seen or been involved in a response. It would not surprise me if that tradition is dying because it's so much easier to comment somewhere on the internet where some people will see it. But of course without an official endorsement from the journal / preprint server / whatever, it's hard to know which forum you should direct your response to.

throwaway14356 2y ago
A critical original response should be accepted as true and be advertised at the top of the paper if not responded to within 14 days. The response should involve corrections or a timely planning for it. I don't like how software has to be actively maintained to be usable or taken serious but the results are hard to question.
a57721 2y ago
An average paper from arXiv has 10 people in the world who can appreciate every detail of the text, half of them are the authors, their advisors, and paper's referee, the other half will be mentioned in the acknowledgements. This is especially true e.g. for mathematics. I want to point this out because papertalk.xyz features many texts like that. Moderating some kind of "official" internet forum for papers will require a lot of time, and most researchers won't bother to follow it, because messages will be of low value, from crackpots and occasional ill-spirited anonymous commenters. In 2016 arXiv run a survey about new features. Comment section, votes on submissions etc. were not popular. Many people were against this stuff, so it was not implemented. There have been projects like PubPeer that tried to explore this territory and never really took off. I see a value in a website like HN with links to papers of bigger interest and discussions for the general public. E.g. someone posts a link to a new publication/preprint about cancer research, a supposed superconductor discovery, massive high energy physics experiments, etc. and users are free to discuss the meaning, beauty, impact, and credibility of the results. But I'm not sure if this can work for mundane papers that are >99% of published research. I also think it will be much harder to market to the researchers. As someone who read, wrote, reviewed papers.

by dguest 2y ago

throwaway14356 2y ago

A critical original response should be accepted as true and be advertised at the top of the paper if not responded to within 14 days. The response should involve corrections or a timely planning for it. I don't like how software has to be actively maintained to be usable or taken serious but the results are hard to question.

a57721 2y ago

An average paper from arXiv has 10 people in the world who can appreciate every detail of the text, half of them are the authors, their advisors, and paper's referee, the other half will be mentioned in the acknowledgements. This is especially true e.g. for mathematics. I want to point this out because papertalk.xyz features many texts like that. Moderating some kind of "official" internet forum for papers will require a lot of time, and most researchers won't bother to follow it, because messages will be of low value, from crackpots and occasional ill-spirited anonymous commenters. In 2016 arXiv run a survey about new features. Comment section, votes on submissions etc. were not popular. Many people were against this stuff, so it was not implemented. There have been projects like PubPeer that tried to explore this territory and never really took off. I see a value in a website like HN with links to papers of bigger interest and discussions for the general public. E.g. someone posts a link to a new publication/preprint about cancer research, a supposed superconductor discovery, massive high energy physics experiments, etc. and users are free to discuss the meaning, beauty, impact, and credibility of the results. But I'm not sure if this can work for mundane papers that are >99% of published research. I also think it will be much harder to market to the researchers. As someone who read, wrote, reviewed papers.