Many (more) reviewers ???? - [panic on Roberto's face]
Isn't real peer-review just a question of standing the test of time?
A piece of work blatantly wrong will sooner or later be picked up by someone (although I acknowledge that wrong papers can have serious consequences on one's ability to
get funding). Limitations on a piece of research due to whatever reason will be hopefully lessened by other authors or the next generation(s) of scientists.
Overall, I don't think the current system is really that bad.
Cheers
Roberto
On 10 Oct 2013, at 06:57, miguel <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> (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:[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
Roberto A. Steiner
Group Leader
Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics
King's College London
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Room 3.10A
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