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I work for a company that is trying to change this - academia.edu. We're all about open access to the world's academic research. Peer review is definitely somet

I work for a company that is trying to change this - academia.edu. We're all about open access to the world's academic research. Peer review is definitely something we're working on! We're also hiring in SF, if this interests you (jon at academia.edu)

throwaway2934 11y ago
My privacy expectations for peer review are quite high. Perhaps higher than in any other case. However, I expect the entire world to know any time I accidentally follow a link to academia.edu. And I especially expect that academia.edu will try their damnedest to figure out who I am and sell that information to someone. Put simply, academia.edu feels like linkedin.com. This juxtaposition is going to be a huge issue for academia.edu if they try to get into the peer review software game. I would sooner not participate on an editorial board/program committee than use academia.edu to submit a blind review. I simply would not trust a platform associated with that site or its parent company to take privacy seriously. I suspect this attitude is fairly common. Linkedin/Facebook/Academia.edu exist solely because privacy isn't perceived as more valuable than the services provided. But every academic I know is extremely serious about protecting the anonymity of reviewers. If you want such a product to succeed, you'll need an extremely strong pro-privacy pitch (backed up by The Truth) along the lines of "your data is used for exactly nothing other than displaying peer review results for this particular paper to the authors and the other board/committee members". Especially since most academic's perception of academia.edu is "that site that lets me see who reads my papers."
- hoopd 11y ago
  1) Have a good idea X. 2) Reach out for funding and technical knowledge. 3) Investors and new co-founders want "Facebook for X" 4) Good idea is now a social network embedded in X's problem space.
SeanLuke 11y ago
> We're all about open access to the world's academic research. Is this really true? academia.edu seems to me to be a walled garden, essentially linkedin for professors. It's true that I can download one paper at a time -- after I have signed up -- but can I download all of them in bulk? Can I easily rehost all my papers elsewhere? Can I view papers without signing up? Can I download your social graph?
tmalsburg2 11y ago
Sorry to be critical but whatever the solution is going to be, I hope it will not involve some version of Facebook for academia. This would make things only worse. The infrastructure of science cannot be allowed to be under the control of a company. Too much power in one place, too much conflict of interest.

throwaway2934 11y ago

My privacy expectations for peer review are quite high. Perhaps higher than in any other case. However, I expect the entire world to know any time I accidentally follow a link to academia.edu. And I especially expect that academia.edu will try their damnedest to figure out who I am and sell that information to someone. Put simply, academia.edu feels like linkedin.com. This juxtaposition is going to be a huge issue for academia.edu if they try to get into the peer review software game. I would sooner not participate on an editorial board/program committee than use academia.edu to submit a blind review. I simply would not trust a platform associated with that site or its parent company to take privacy seriously. I suspect this attitude is fairly common. Linkedin/Facebook/Academia.edu exist solely because privacy isn't perceived as more valuable than the services provided. But every academic I know is extremely serious about protecting the anonymity of reviewers. If you want such a product to succeed, you'll need an extremely strong pro-privacy pitch (backed up by The Truth) along the lines of "your data is used for exactly nothing other than displaying peer review results for this particular paper to the authors and the other board/committee members". Especially since most academic's perception of academia.edu is "that site that lets me see who reads my papers."

hoopd 11y ago
1) Have a good idea X. 2) Reach out for funding and technical knowledge. 3) Investors and new co-founders want "Facebook for X" 4) Good idea is now a social network embedded in X's problem space.

SeanLuke 11y ago

> We're all about open access to the world's academic research. Is this really true? academia.edu seems to me to be a walled garden, essentially linkedin for professors. It's true that I can download one paper at a time -- after I have signed up -- but can I download all of them in bulk? Can I easily rehost all my papers elsewhere? Can I view papers without signing up? Can I download your social graph?

tmalsburg2 11y ago

Sorry to be critical but whatever the solution is going to be, I hope it will not involve some version of Facebook for academia. This would make things only worse. The infrastructure of science cannot be allowed to be under the control of a company. Too much power in one place, too much conflict of interest.