(Sorry if you get this twice. The first time as marked as junk by our
email server. Well, it may be junk after all...)
Hi Marco,
Impact factor is the last refuge of the publishing system as it is.
Precisely because in this ocean of untrusted publications we tend to
believe that high impact factor journals deserve our respect. This is
more or less all right: among those who have investigated the issue
some
are more pessimistic than others about the quality of papers published
in those journals. Yet, it is hard to believe that their papers are
generally worse than those of not-so-high impact factor journals. But
from a scientific point of view, taking into account the evolution of
research and publishing, the trust that we give to high impact journals
is, in my opinion, wishful thinking.
Concerning peer-reviewing, I don't think that adding more opacity will
help. On the contrary. What I believe, but I don't have any proof of
it,
is that peer-reviewing is useful only if it is more transparent,
engages
in a real scientific discussion (understood as a conversation, not as
an
exchange of messages separated by weeks) and is open to (many) more
reviewers. But that alone will not help if the way research is done
does
not evolve at the same time.
On Wed, 9 Oct 2013 18:56:32 -0700, Marco Lolicato wrote:
Hi scientists,
this interesting topic brought back to my mind a similar discussion I
had with a colleague of mine and now I want to share it with you
guys.
As Vale already pointed out, the peer-review process seems to be far
from an ideal system: there are many papers in which one of the
author
is himself the editor of the journal in which the paper is published;
the impact factor of a journal is becoming the "only" way to judge
the
quality of a paper (and of the authors) [example: one of the
European
Commission grants has as mandatory eligibility criterium that the
applicant should have at least one paper published in a "high IF
journal"...I'm asking...Why?].
I have also the suspect (from my insignificant experience) that some
papers are accepted in really high IF journals without a clear
peer-review process, but basing the decision mostly on the authors
listed in that paper.
Anyway, for those reasons and more, I was wondering if maybe is
nowadays needed to revisit the peer-review process. One thing that
immediately came out was: the authors of a papers should be hidden to
both the reviewers and the editors, so that paper will be judged only
on the intrinsic quality and not from the names on it or from the
country.
I'm looking forward to see your opinion.
Marco
Il giorno 09/ott/2013, alle ore 15.00, Miguel Ortiz Lombardia ha
scritto:
Hi denizens,
Now that Biology has gone missing, at least in the programs of the
funding agencies in this part of the world, the reflections that I'm
going to expose concern at best that even smaller field of natural
philosophy that we euphemistically call, not without a twist of
candour,
"biomedicine". At worst, they only concern the world whose limits
are
the limits of my language.
As I understand it, the main purpose of really existing
peer-reviewing
is to act as a filter. By selecting those papers deemed publishable
it
spares us the herculean task of reading every possible piece
emanating
from our overheated brains. This actually reveals a big problem of
really existing research (with the caveat expressed in the first
paragraph). But I'm not going to venture into that problem: more
clever
minds have drowned in its muddy waters. Back to the point, if the
need
of publishing were not such a strong source of inspiration and we
researchers would feel the compelling necessity of publishing only
when
we could write well-structured and thoughtful papers, full of useful
data and rich in new ideas and hypotheses, we could then read a
reasonable percentage of the papers concerning our fields of
interest.
In that utopia, peer-reviewing could be a continuous, transparent
and
open process that would involve a relevant part of the community.
Not
likely to happen and probably for good: knowledge seems to progress
by a
combination of slow accretion of small steps and sudden
(re)interpretations of those steps.
But what is interesting to see in that utopian/dystopian possibility
is
that really existing peer-reviewing suffers from a fundamental
problem:
statistical significance. Because, what significance is to be
deposited
in the opinions, whether reasonably argued or not (another thorny
Pandora box I won't dare to open), of two, three or at best four
people
acting as editors or reviewers? Anonymous people in the latter case,
to
complete the scene.
In the tension between these requirements trust is suppose to build
up
and give us a reasonable path to pursue our noble endeavours. In my
insignificant opinion, in the current state of matters, trust is
seriously broken. Too much pressure to publish, too many journals,
too
much money to make from publishing, too restricted and opaque a
peer-reviewing system... As a corollary, my impression is that while
many of us suspect we live in a bubble, we all seem to tacitly
expect
that we will not see it explode. A good friend of mine once offered
me a
book about the Spanish Armada; no joke. Its title was "The confident
hope of a miracle".
To rebuild trust we need, among other things, to rebuild our tools.
And
we better do it before the next big bang. Research is not the only
human
activity involving knowledge and its transmission, we could use some
curiosity beyond our noses.
Vale.
Miguel Ortiz Lombardía
Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques (UMR7257)
CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université
Case 932, 163 Avenue de Luminy, 13288 Marseille cedex 9, France
Tel: +33(0) 491 82 86 44
Fax: +33(0) 491 26 67 20
mailto:miguel.ortiz-lombar...@afmb.univ-mrs.fr
http://www.afmb.univ-mrs.fr/Miguel-Ortiz-Lombardia
El 09/10/13 20:04, Navdeep Sidhu escribió:
John Bohannon wrote about his experience writing "a computer
program to generate hundreds of unique papers." Thought some of you
might find it of interest:
John Bohannon. Who's Afraid of Peer Review? Science 342 (Oct. 4,
2013) 60-65.
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6154.60
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
Best regards,
Navdeep
---
Navdeep Sidhu
University of Goettingen
---
--
Miguel
Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques (UMR7257)
CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université
Case 932, 163 Avenue de Luminy, 13288 Marseille cedex 9, France
Tel: +33(0) 491 82 55 93
Fax: +33(0) 491 26 67 20
e-mail: miguel.ortiz-lombar...@afmb.univ-mrs.fr
Web: http://w2.afmb.univ-mrs.fr/Miguel-Ortiz-Lombardia
