ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#2It's worth noting that Cosma Shalizi has been doing this for about six years now, and it's becoming increasingly popular in certain areas of academia.
Background:
http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/442.html
http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/864.html
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-i...
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#3In my opinion, Yann LeCun is one of the top celebrities in ML/Neural Net research. His voice really has weight.
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#4In my opinion, Yann LeCun is one of the top celebrities in ML/Neural Net research. His voice really has weight.
Definitely. At work today we were watching a video on Machine Learning by Andrew Ng and he made a number of references to LeCun's involvement the field, and listed him in the acknowledgements section of his talk. It has encouraged me to look into more of his areas of work.
I signed up for Andrew's ML course (https://class.coursera.org/ml/lecture/preview , start date is not announced yet). Really looking forward to it.
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#5The machine learning community has been pushing for open access for quite awhile.
In 2001, the 40 editors of Machine Learning (some of whom I was quite proud to know), resigned to start the JMLR with this letter: http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html . Note also their citation of the similar actions taken by the editors of Logic Programming in 1999.
EDIT: btw, the JMLR is at http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/papers/ . moar edit: http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/mloss/ for relevant open source code.
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#6> I have pledged to no longer do any volunteer work, including reviewing, for non-open access publications, which unfortunately includes pretty much every publication from [commercial-publisher].
The volunteer aspect of peer review is the worst part. How much is an expert's time worth? How much is a two-sentence review worth to an author? If it were paid on an hourly basis using an honor system, it would be fantastic for quality and consistency.
That closed journals ask for volunteer review makes it doubly bad. But I still believe paid review for open access journals would be a good thing. I know, it is an unrealistic fantasy.
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#7The earliest really large-scale instance of this occurred in 2001, when more than 30,000 researchers signed a letter boycotting any journal which didn't make articles open access within 6 months of publication. The boycott meant not reviewing for, editing for, or publishing in, any such journal. Signatories included many of the best-known scientists in the world. One of the authors of the boycott was Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, who had just completed a term as Director of the US National Institutes of Health.
It's unclear how many of those researchers followed through on the boycott. Some did -- I've met many scientists who say they send letters similar to LeCun's. I've also met some who signed, but who now admit (often sheepishly) that they didn't follow through.
Text of the letter is here:
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#8The machine learning community has been pushing for open access for quite awhile. In 2001, the 40 editors of Machine Learning (some of whom I was quite proud to know), resigned to start the JMLR with this letter: http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html . Note also their citation of the similar actions taken by the editors of Logic Programming in 1999. EDIT: btw, the JMLR is at http://jmlr.csail.mit.e…
JMLR is an amazing success -- a great example of a very high quality open access journal that doesn't ask authors to pay any article charges.
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#9In my opinion, Yann LeCun is one of the top celebrities in ML/Neural Net research. His voice really has weight.
Definitely. At work today we were watching a video on Machine Learning by Andrew Ng and he made a number of references to LeCun's involvement the field, and listed him in the acknowledgements section of his talk. It has encouraged me to look into more of his areas of work. I signed up for Andrew's ML course ( https://class.coursera.org/ml/lecture/preview , start date is not announced yet). Really looking forward to i…
I took the very first course when it was a Stanford experiment and I have to say that was a lot of fun! It feels a bit downgraded in terms of difficulty but quality wise was very good.
Re: ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal
#10Professors and researchers should start charging for time spent helping the closed journals at the very least.
If you think your reviews are valuable, charge accordingly. You provide value to the publishing process and should capture that value. You are providing the service of "expertise". If you provided that service to a lawyer, you would earn several hundred dollars an hour.
There's probably a business opportunity in creating a clearinghouse for reviewers, editors, etc. and managing the accounting.
Edit: Grammaring more goodly