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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:[log in to unmask]
>> 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: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://w2.afmb.univ-mrs.fr/Miguel-Ortiz-Lombardia
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