Peer review: the end of an error?

Post by danieltillett » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

wyattpeak wrote: post #60

danieltillett wrote: post #37

The big problem with peer review is almost no reviewing takes place and it is at best is either a way for your enemies to get revenge or a cheap proofreading service. The solution is to offer a largish reward to the most constructive peer review for each manuscript chosen by the editor, or better by other reviewers. If I (or more likely one of my starving grad students) knew that I would get $1000 for providing the m…

But who decides what's constructive? It's all very well if you're choosing amongst people who basically agree with you - what if they're telling you it's going to take another year of experiments to get it up to standard? Which reviewers, too, do you respond to? If it's a popular paper you probably can't respond to all criticism, but picking which criticism to interact with isn't going to lead to good science. There'…

Post by bervlad » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

dhilistrian wrote: post #26

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

This article says that peer review is unpaid - it isn't. If you are an academic or work in industrial research, it's part of your paid job to do peer review as part of the community. You are paid for it - it's part of your job and it's normal to do it during work hours.

That's the way it should be seen, but it's often not. I was at a conference not too long ago and chatting with a fellow faculty member at another university, pretty well-known in his field (in a medical school department), who told me a story about how his chair berided him for doing peer reviews at all. The colleague was like "but this is part of our job as a scientist" and the chair's response was "but what account…

Post by wyattpeak » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:58 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #61

wyattpeak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides what's constructive? It's all very well if you're choosing amongst people who basically agree with you - what if they're telling you it's going to take another year of experiments to get it up to standard? Which reviewers, too, do you respond to? If it's a popular paper you probably can't respond to all criticism, but picking which criticism to interact with isn't going to lead to good science. There'…

I suggested in the post either the editor or the other reviewers makes the decision of which was the most constructive review. The suggestion of going back and doing more work exists under the current peer review system. With my proposal you might even get suggestions of what work needs to be done and why you should do it. In all the papers I have published I have only had a few reviewers agree on anything. The norma…

Post by gophile » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #49

improbable22 wrote: post #16

A point not mentioned in the article is that this formal peer review system is itself quite young. I think that sending every paper out to several reviewers only became the default once we had xerox machines -- 1960s? We did a lot of serious science before that. A bit earlier, the famous anecdote is about Einstein's offence that the Phys Rev editor would dare to send his paper for review at all -- apparently this wou…

If anything, that works as a great defense of peer review given Einstein was wrong.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 5:46 AM UTC

VHRanger wrote: post #62

throwawayyx96 wrote: post #19

Author of the article is the same guy who, some years ago, organized a boycott of Elsevier journals due to their extortionate charges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge He has practiced what he preaches with respect to publishing in open access journals.

Timothy Gowers has the moral courage to do what pretty much everyone else is waiting for other people to initiate