Yes, this is definitely a Catch-22 situation. If you don't get
published in a peer-reviewed journal, you will not be quoted, and so
you will not have an impact assessment. If you are an author without
an impact assessment, you won't get published in a peer-reviewed
journal. The consequence of this is science will become increasingly
corrupted until a major mishap or disaster befalls the human race, at
which point, it will be as well not to advertise the fact that you are
or were a scientist.
On the other hand, this gloomy prediction could be ameliorated by
giving instant direct free access to the Web of Knowledge to everyone,
and not just the privileged intellectual elite. Durham University has
made a good start in this direction, by offering these facilities to
all its graduates, but only when a substantial proportion of the
educated population does have these 'privileges' will there be any
correcting factor in what is an increasing problem.
John Urquhart
On 9 March 2013 20:35, the.Duke.of.URL <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> This post is about a piece on mathbabe's blog and it concerns a study of
> journal ranking and its impact in science, jocularly called "Deep Impact".
> Here is the link to mathbabe's post.
>
> http://mathbabe.org/2013/03/08/unintended-consequences-of-journal-ranking/
>
> I have also included a copy of the article she is talking about as an
> attachment for convenience in case you wish to peruse the source. The
> reference section is quite long.
>
> Mathbabe, aka Cathy O'Neil, summarizes the research but the gist of the
> piece is that there have been incredibly few scientific or statistical
> studies where the conclusions drawn use the data relevant to it. I don't
> find this surprising, as in the UK, this has become nothing more than an
> ideological stick to beat university workers with. Unsurprisingly, the
> authors have discovered that using such tools as this to assess scientific
> work to be bad practice. It certainly isn't scientific. The impact of a
> journal or an article in many fields may take as long as ten years to have a
> significant impact, particularly if it is original. It certainly isn't
> within the time frame used by government.
>
> Another point made by the authors is the incidence of what others have
> called scientific fraud. These others have focused on the collusion of some
> of the journals in this -- especially those that don't regulate their
> content very well. Some journals refuse to retract articles even if it has
> been found to be fraudulent. One of the conclusions the authors reach is
> that the entire publishing model needs to be reformed. This will not be a
> surprise to many of you.
>
> The authors didn't study the refereeing process. A number of senior
> academics, mathematicians being among the most involved, contend that the
> process has become virtually completely corrupted and they now refuse to
> either publish in certain journals or publish in any of them at all,
> preferring to publish in an arXive. Some of them unsurprisingly are also
> open access activists.
>
> At the end of her post, where she notes that the authors advocate a new kind
> of publishing platform, she provides a link to the Episciences Project,
> which is an undertaking to take commercial publishers out of the publishing
> loop without sacrificing sound peer review and do it at low cost (although
> the server costs are not small). The Episciences Project is based at
> Cornell, but there are similar projects in Germany and France.
>
>
> Happy reading,
>
> larry
>
> Dr L Brownstein
> [Alt-e] [log in to unmask]
>
> Review Editor
> Radical Statistics
>
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