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Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

newscientist.com

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Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#71

Post by sitkack »

specialp wrote: post #68
lumost wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me that the challenge of peer review is that it is non-transparent, and gate-keeping. It is impossible for one to read the peer review feedback related to a published paper, and it's similarly difficult to publish controversial pieces that break established norms. Contrast this to the peer review culture of popular open source projects - major pull requests have extensive and transparent dialogue, and disa…

There's a difference with scientific publishing for most disciplines. I work for a non-profit scientific publisher. Much of the research today that is coming out is extremely specialized. Thus there aren't many people in the world that have the expertise to referee a paper. So the review is anonymous in order to get a more frank and honest review (we hope). I am also a developer. There are far more people that can gi…

It sounds like machine checked proofs or other mechanical formalisms need to be employed to ensure scientific validity.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#73

Post by KevinEldon »

Angostura wrote: post #21
avs733 wrote: post #19

Add in that the quality of the system is massively massively broken...peer review is about as accurate as the flip of a coin. It does not promote gorund breaking or novel research, it barely (arguably doesn't) even contribute to quality research. I had a colleague recently be told by a journal editor 'we don't publish critiques from junior scholars.' So much for the nature of peer review being entirely driven by the…

What would be a good alternative to peer-review though? Genuinely interested.

ResearchOne(1) was founded to address the issues with peer review and the academic journal system.

“A platform for scholarly publishing and peer review that empowers researchers with the

Autonomy to pursue their passions,

Authority to develop and disseminate their work, and

Access to engage with the international community of scholars.”

Harry Crane, an Associate Professor of Statistics at Rutgers, is one of the founders and a good follow on Twitter.

1 - https://researchers.one/

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#74

Post by ummonk »

justinpombrio wrote: post #5

For anyone who still doesn't know this: publishers do not pay paper authors, in any field. I am also not aware of a publisher paying peer reviewers. (Lowly soon-to-be-postdoc here; a professor would be able to say more.)

But for open access journals, authors often do pay publishers.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#75

Post by qwerty456127 »

Angostura wrote: post #21
avs733 wrote: post #19

Add in that the quality of the system is massively massively broken...peer review is about as accurate as the flip of a coin. It does not promote gorund breaking or novel research, it barely (arguably doesn't) even contribute to quality research. I had a colleague recently be told by a journal editor 'we don't publish critiques from junior scholars.' So much for the nature of peer review being entirely driven by the…

What would be a good alternative to peer-review though? Genuinely interested.

Why not just build a kind of a social network where people would post research papers, "like" interesting and high-quality papers and reference papers relevant to their research, post their comments and for every participant you would be able to see what papers they have published and reviewed? Sounds fairly simple. Why not?

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#76

Post by dharmab »

sitkack wrote: post #71
specialp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference with scientific publishing for most disciplines. I work for a non-profit scientific publisher. Much of the research today that is coming out is extremely specialized. Thus there aren't many people in the world that have the expertise to referee a paper. So the review is anonymous in order to get a more frank and honest review (we hope). I am also a developer. There are far more people that can gi…

It sounds like machine checked proofs or other mechanical formalisms need to be employed to ensure scientific validity.

How does a machine proof check a psychology study? Or a drug trial?

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#77

Post by barry-cotter »

Angostura wrote: post #21
avs733 wrote: post #19

Add in that the quality of the system is massively massively broken...peer review is about as accurate as the flip of a coin. It does not promote gorund breaking or novel research, it barely (arguably doesn't) even contribute to quality research. I had a colleague recently be told by a journal editor 'we don't publish critiques from junior scholars.' So much for the nature of peer review being entirely driven by the…

What would be a good alternative to peer-review though? Genuinely interested.

A good alternative to the current system of pre-publication peer review would be post publication peer review. The former, or one pass editorial review, is how scientific publication worked almost universally pre WW2. There are many scientific disciplines where everything important happens in preprints and publication in a journal is for archival purposes more than communication. Economics, Physics, Mathematics, Political Science, Genetics and Genomics, every discipline with substantial coverage on SSRN or the arxiv works on post publication peer review.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#78

Post by sitkack »

dharmab wrote: post #76
sitkack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like machine checked proofs or other mechanical formalisms need to be employed to ensure scientific validity.

How does a machine proof check a psychology study? Or a drug trial?

open question! :)

We could at least have the data and the statistical analysis (code) accompany the paper.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#79

Post by geoalchimista »

sitkack wrote: post #71
specialp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference with scientific publishing for most disciplines. I work for a non-profit scientific publisher. Much of the research today that is coming out is extremely specialized. Thus there aren't many people in the world that have the expertise to referee a paper. So the review is anonymous in order to get a more frank and honest review (we hope). I am also a developer. There are far more people that can gi…

It sounds like machine checked proofs or other mechanical formalisms need to be employed to ensure scientific validity.

Machine checked proofs only work for deductive, non-experimental disciplines. You can't use machine checked proofs to tell if a drug is effective or not. Human referees have to be involved no matter how advanced the AI is.
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