5 ms·
A thought I had: what if there were a service which maintained a list of arxiv identifiers (or, maybe also allow doi identifiers, but only if some extra conditi
by drdeca 2y ago
A thought I had: what if there were a service which maintained a list of arxiv identifiers (or, maybe also allow doi identifiers, but only if some extra conditions are met) that met their standards for notability/interesting-ness/quality (each URL could maybe be accompanied by the title and a list of the authors of the work).
And suppose that all this organization published, was this list of URLs (and titles and names).
It seems conceivable that, if their list became respected, getting one’s pdf on this list could, maybe (this seems a stretch) prestigious.
Now, if they accepted submissions of URLs to be considered for inclusion in a future issue of their public list of URLs, if being on this list was prestigious, they would presumably be flooded with submissions, and need to reduce the number of submissions they received somehow. Then, I imagine them charging some fee for submitting a URL for them to consider for evaluation.
Of course, they might include a few documents that no one submitted, in order to make sure the list remains useful by having most of the most relevant papers in whatever field, in order to maintain prestige.
Conceivably there could be multiple such organizations doing this for different fields and subfields.
If this happened, it would seem to be essentially a replication of the phenomenon of author-paid publication fees in academic journals, but without relying on copyright or actually doing the publishing of the articles.
- wakawaka28 2y agoWho would pay for an article they could get for free? Who would pay to subscribe to a journal that just aggregates open-access articles?
- drdeca 2y agoIn what I was imagining, the income was from people paying to be considered for inclusion on the list. Reading the list is free.
- amatic 2y agoThe scientific community, or the ministry of science of some country, or a university - might find that paying for peer review, for example, might be more effective in promoting good science than paying for publication.
- wakawaka28 2y agoPerhaps that should also be compensated but you're talking about another cost associated with publication (and even non-publication). Since there's no guarantee that reviewers even read the crap they are assigned to read, I don't think paying them is the best approach. It would perhaps be better to publish the names of the reviewers. And if you reject a paper, you have to go on the record with your gripes. I'm sure these policies would slow reviews down an awful lot though. Reviews are only supposed to uncover blatant errors I suppose, and not offer definitive endorsement of results.
- Laakeri 2y agoThere are such things, they are called "arxiv overlay journals". Couple of examples from my research area: https://www.advancesincombinatorics.com/ https://www.advancesincombinatorics.com/, https://theoretics.episciences.org/ https://theoretics.episciences.org/
- jbaber 2y agoThis is great! I'm trying to think of any disadvantage.