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Entire field of particle physics is to switch to open-access publishing

nature.com

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Re: Entire field of particle physics is to switch to open-access publishing

#31

Post by krichman »

jseliger wrote: post #26
brazzy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, someone has to. The alternative is having the authors pay, and that creates the wrong kind of incentives.

I wrote about this recently [1], and here's my best shot: Contrary to what some readers have said in e-mails to me, or inferred from what I’ve written, I’m actually not at all opposed to peer review or peer-reviewed publications. But the important thing these days isn’t a medium for publishing—pretty much anyone with an Internet connection can get that for free—but the imprimatur of peer-review, which says, “This guy…

Researchers and scientists could have asymmetric keys and peer review in that fashion. The authors could append cryptographic signatures to the article. Then we don't need centralized journals, just a list of academics whose scientific rigor is trusted.

Re: Entire field of particle physics is to switch to open-access publishing

#32

Post by spin »

krichman wrote: post #31
jseliger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote about this recently [1], and here's my best shot: Contrary to what some readers have said in e-mails to me, or inferred from what I’ve written, I’m actually not at all opposed to peer review or peer-reviewed publications. But the important thing these days isn’t a medium for publishing—pretty much anyone with an Internet connection can get that for free—but the imprimatur of peer-review, which says, “This guy…

Researchers and scientists could have asymmetric keys and peer review in that fashion. The authors could append cryptographic signatures to the article. Then we don't need centralized journals, just a list of academics whose scientific rigor is trusted.

I have often thought about doing something similar to this. Basically, you publish a signed version of your paper on your own website, and then other scientists can sign it with notes. It would be kind of like a "Facebook like" system. (By "sign", I mean a cryptographic signature.)

"82 PhD scientists have reviewed this paper, including 3 people in your close network and 2 more people from your extended network." ...or something like that.

You could do a network-graph search. Start with some professors that you trust, and some keywords that you're interested in and start walking the graph from there.

I don't know what the profit motive would be for someone to build this though. Nor the motive for individual reviewers to carefully review someone's paper and provide detailed useful feedback...

Re: Entire field of particle physics is to switch to open-access publishing

#34

Post by naa42 »

anonymouz wrote: post #8
smoyer wrote: post #5

I guess my question is whether we need the journals at all ... the process of printing the journal itself certainly isn't the hard part, but is there a way to properly do peer review in an open system? I'm certainly happy to see this consortium has moved in the right direction, but could it be even more open?

Peer review is done for free by the community in any case, so this would not be a major problem. Most suggestions for a post-journal system I have seen so far are about setting up electronic journals with editorial boards that send out submissions for peer review as usual. Moving away from journals seems to be largerly an issue of missing consensus and inertia. Also, where you publish is important for hiring committe…

We already have model for future journals: http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/ SIGMA is just an overlay over arXiv with added peer review. Also it has non-zero impact factor.
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