On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Greg Kuperberg wrote: > In mathematics peer review really serves two different purposes: To weed > out papers that are *wrong*, and to segregate work by how *important* > it is. It has really been true all along, since decades before the math > arXiv even began, that most mathematicians can trust each other to produce > correct work most of the time. > > I do wonder whether name recognition and self-policing would have > vouchsafed the same quality all along.
This is a clear statement of Greg's hypothesis, and I will not debate it further. Let's now wait for the empirical results to see how correct it was for (1) mathematics, (2) physics, and (3) other disciplines. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: [email protected]
