4 ms·

Peer review doesn't demand arcane terminology or difficult-to-understand writing. Ideally, peer review is just someone writing down some thoughts and other peop

by glesica 13y ago

Peer review doesn't demand arcane terminology or difficult-to-understand writing. Ideally, peer review is just someone writing down some thoughts and other people who have some expertise in the field providing comments on those thoughts before they are published. The problem with a blog is that there is no way to screen for quality or obvious mistakes. Of course the current method of doing this might be imperfect, or even completely broken depending on the field, but the solution isn't to just tell academics to start blogs and call it a day. It's a more complex problem than that.

jbooth 13y ago
I guess I'm not seeing a categorical difference. Someone posts a blog to HN that's full of garbage and bad numbers and it gets debunked. We don't have journal subscriptions or piles of bureaucratic BS, just some people who are knowledgeable in their area talking shop. I don't see where all the ceremony creates enough value to pay for itself.
- glesica 13y ago
  That's true, and it works well for subjective or popular topics. However, it works much less well for highly specialized, technical topics. I have noticed that quite a few very technical, or highly specialized articles end up with just a small handful of comments. This is a problem in research because just about everything is technical and specialized. Another problem is recruiting enough people to actually review all the research produced. HN has a handful of links per day. There are tens of thousands of researchers around the world doing work. Peer reviewers aren't generally compensated monetarily, but they have a strong moral incentive to help out and review articles, especially if they themselves have published in the journal in question. Again, I don't want to come across as defending the entire system. There are certainly things to be improved. All I'm saying is that I don't think the answer is to just tell everyone to start a blog. It's an appealing idea from a populist, egalitarian, and perhaps "hacker" perspective (just get the information out there!), but the current system provides a bit more than a simple communications medium.

by glesica 13y ago

jbooth 13y ago

I guess I'm not seeing a categorical difference. Someone posts a blog to HN that's full of garbage and bad numbers and it gets debunked. We don't have journal subscriptions or piles of bureaucratic BS, just some people who are knowledgeable in their area talking shop. I don't see where all the ceremony creates enough value to pay for itself.

glesica 13y ago
That's true, and it works well for subjective or popular topics. However, it works much less well for highly specialized, technical topics. I have noticed that quite a few very technical, or highly specialized articles end up with just a small handful of comments. This is a problem in research because just about everything is technical and specialized. Another problem is recruiting enough people to actually review all the research produced. HN has a handful of links per day. There are tens of thousands of researchers around the world doing work. Peer reviewers aren't generally compensated monetarily, but they have a strong moral incentive to help out and review articles, especially if they themselves have published in the journal in question. Again, I don't want to come across as defending the entire system. There are certainly things to be improved. All I'm saying is that I don't think the answer is to just tell everyone to start a blog. It's an appealing idea from a populist, egalitarian, and perhaps "hacker" perspective (just get the information out there!), but the current system provides a bit more than a simple communications medium.