While we're talking about needed journal changes, it's worth pointing out that Nature, the journal, now allows articles submitted by authors to be open to anyone, which is great, but only if the authors pay Nature $11,690 per article. Otherwise, only institutions which subscribe to Nature can see the articles.
It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
41–50 of 126 posts
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the things that peer reviewers do, in my experience, in biology: - question whether or not the conclusions you are making are supported by the data you are presenting - ask for additional experiments - evaluate whether or not your research is sufficiently novel and properly contextualized - spotting obvious red flags - you seem to discount this, but it's quite valuable In my experience, the process of peer re…
I also work in biological sciences research, but I'm more skeptical of peer review than you appear to be. My main criticism is that peer review is an n=2 process. Why not publish an unreviewed pre-print in bioRxiv and explicitly solicit constructive, public feedback directly on the pre-print on bioRxiv? I envision something similar to GitHub where users can open issues and have nuanced discussions about the work. The…
I agree with your suggestion and would 100% welcome that process - though I don't think they're necessarily mutually exclusive. As I see it, the main difference between the status quo and the more open process you suggest is that in theory reviewers that are hand-picked by the editor are more likely to have directly relevant experience, ideally translating to a better, and potentially more efficient review. Of course, that also comes with the drawbacks that you mentioned - that the reviewers are easily de-anonymized, and that they may be biased against your research since they're essentially competitors -- I've had the good fortune of not being negatively affected by this, but I have many colleagues who have not been so lucky.
Edit: Also, to comment more on my own experience, I was lucky to be working in a well-established lab with a PI whose name carried a lot of weight and who had a lot of experience getting papers through the review process. We also had the resources to address requests that might've been too much for a less well-funded lab. I'm aware that this colours my views and didn't mean to suggest that peer review, or the publication process, are perfect. The main reason I wanted to provide my perspective is that I feel that on HN there's often an undercurrent of criticism that is levied against the state of scientific research that isn't entirely fair in ways that may not be obvious to readers that haven't experienced it first-hand.
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also work in biological sciences research, but I'm more skeptical of peer review than you appear to be. My main criticism is that peer review is an n=2 process. Why not publish an unreviewed pre-print in bioRxiv and explicitly solicit constructive, public feedback directly on the pre-print on bioRxiv? I envision something similar to GitHub where users can open issues and have nuanced discussions about the work. The…
I think the key is that peer review is a promise of an n=2 process. There's no promise that an unreviewed pre-print is going to get two constructive readers. It's also wildly subject to bias - being on a pre-print with a junior, female researcher was eye opening as to the merits of double blind review.
You could blind the pre-print process, too?
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#44I do computer science research and publish regularly (in conferences, not journals, since that's how computer science mostly works -- you write a paper, look for the soonest upcoming relevant conference deadline, submit there, and get a response 2-3 months later). I think discussions about peer review often fail to explain all of the things peer review can accomplish:
1) Verifying that work is correct, assuming that the author is honest (e.g., you take their data at face value)
2) Verifying that work is correct, assuming that the author is malicious (e.g., you scrutinize their data to see if it's fabricated)
3) Certifying that the paper is "interesting" (universities, grant-making bodies, and other bureaucratic entities want some evidence that the researcher their funding is good, and somebody has to hand out the gold stars)
It takes time for even an expert to do 1), and it takes still more time to do 2). There aren't really good incentives to do it beyond caring about your field, or wanting to build on the thing you're reading. 3) can be done more quickly, but it's subjective, but a world where things are only assessed for correctness and not interesting-ness is a world where external funding bodies rely on other weird proxies like citation metrics or something to figure out who's good, and it's not clear to me that that's better.
My perception from computer science is that it should be harder to submit papers, because there are too many authors who simply rarely produce good papers and are clogging up the conferences with endless resubmissions until they get reviewers lazy enough to all say "weak accept".
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's distinguish between papers and preprints, please. arXiv has contributed to a blurring of the distinction. The arXiv preprints are useful but should always be taken with a grain of salt. There is nearly no filtering done on things uploaded to arXiv. Everyone accessing someone's uncritically reviewed work is a bittersweet gift.
In mathematics, at least, papers and preprints are indeed widely considered to be the same thing. In practice, for people working in the field, they are. Math papers tend to be highly technical, read by other specialists in the field. When it comes for correctness -- whether or not I should take a paper with a grain of salt -- the authors' reputation counts for much more than the journal's. And in case of student aut…
You can always overlay a reputation system on top of your pre-print server.
The informal one you describe here, or any formal one you can come up with.
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#46While we're talking about needed journal changes, it's worth pointing out that Nature, the journal, now allows articles submitted by authors to be open to anyone, which is great, but only if the authors pay Nature $11,690 per article. Otherwise, only institutions which subscribe to Nature can see the articles.
As far as I know, an author is allowed to share the preprint of their Nature submission, e.g. by posting it on their website or Arxiv, without paying an open access fee [1]. The difference between the submitted and final version of a paper is I think usually pretty minor, so this seems decent enough.
[1] https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/p...
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Junior researchers are also pressured into acquiescing to the peer reviewers rather than having an actual scientific debate Yes. When I was teaching at the graduate school level, doctoral students sometimes came to me for advice about how they should respond to peer reviewer comments. Those comments were usually constructive and worthwhile, but sometimes they seemed to indicate either a misunderstanding or an ideol…
As both a grad student and a postdoc I wrote appeals to rejections for peer review that succeeded.
Yes, you can certainly do that, but I wonder how long the appeal and approval process took? I'd bet it's measured in months.
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#48Computer Science's conventions solve these problems (although CS certainly has other problems): * papers are generally posted to arxiv.org immediately on being finished, so everyone can access them * conferences have fixed deadlines and relatively short, fixed/enforced review cycles
Let's distinguish between papers and preprints, please. arXiv has contributed to a blurring of the distinction. The arXiv preprints are useful but should always be taken with a grain of salt. There is nearly no filtering done on things uploaded to arXiv. Everyone accessing someone's uncritically reviewed work is a bittersweet gift.
> Everyone accessing someone's uncritically reviewed work is a bittersweet gift.
Review work is not always done by senior researcher (e.g., professors). Senior researchers often hand this down to PhDs. Having 3 to 4 reviews by nice junior reviewers doesn't sound very critical.
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#49Computer Science's conventions solve these problems (although CS certainly has other problems): * papers are generally posted to arxiv.org immediately on being finished, so everyone can access them * conferences have fixed deadlines and relatively short, fixed/enforced review cycles
Let's distinguish between papers and preprints, please. arXiv has contributed to a blurring of the distinction. The arXiv preprints are useful but should always be taken with a grain of salt. There is nearly no filtering done on things uploaded to arXiv. Everyone accessing someone's uncritically reviewed work is a bittersweet gift.
I'm confused. Do you accept published papers as gospel? They should be taken with a grain of salt too.
Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals
#50I want to post my research and journals compete to publish it