…then the issue is to reduce the number of papers people publish: this is the central problem in the system: nobody reads them, nobody cites them, etc etc. There are papers out there - quite a number - that have no cites, meaning that even the authors weren't interested in them. A long time ago, when I was at Yale, Fred Richards said that people should be judged on their 10 best papers, and that was all you should be asked to put into a grant or whatever.
If we (the funding agencies, governments etc etc) did this, the number of
papers would go down, there would be less rubbish to review, less money to be
made by Elsevier and the open-access journals, less money wasted on the whole
process - and even the current peer review system would work better because we
would have more time to spend on properly reviewing that little that remained.
My personal contention is that anyone who is publishing more than 10 papers a
year isn't reading and understanding their "own" work - and yet there are many
senior authors that have published 300+ papers in 10-15 years.
Adrian
On 10 Oct 2013, at 09:11, Miguel Ortiz Lombardía
<miguel.ortiz-lombar...@afmb.univ-mrs.fr> wrote:
> Ciao Roberto,
>
> I'm sure the current research system works better in some fields than in
> others. It depends on a number of factors, perhaps the more important of
> them the amount of publications produced. Or it may be as we say in
> Spain: everybody talks about the party according to how much fun is
> having :-)
>
> Agreed that peer-reviewing is a continuous, endless process. But can we
> afford relying on the cleverness of the next generation to carry out our
> present work and mend our present problems? That's why I tried to make
> the distinction between peer-reviewing and really existing
> peer-reviewing. In some fields the latter may get closer to the former,
> sure. You assume that papers are read beyond their title, abstract and
> conclusions, that they are read critically and understood, that when
> flaws or reproducibility problems are found these are reported, that
> those reports are ever widely registered by the community. All that
> happens, fortunately, and more likely when the paper is a "big one". But
> how often does it happen, especially in "hot" fields that produce
> hundreds or thousands of papers a year? Because science is not only
> about "big papers", or is it? So, is really existing peer-reviewing
> actually helping separate grain from straw? How often papers acceptance
> or rejection depend on factors that have hardly anything to do with science?
>
> Again, I don't think that these problems, if they exist and are not a
> product of the imagination of some of us, can be solved by simply
> improving the peer-reviewing procedures.
>
> Cheers,
>
> 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
>
> Le 10/10/13 08:16, Steiner, Roberto a écrit :
>> 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 <miguel.ortiz-lombar...@afmb.univ-mrs.fr>
>> 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: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
>>
>> Roberto A. Steiner
>> Group Leader
>> Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics
>> King's College London
>> roberto.stei...@kcl.ac.uk
>>
>> Room 3.10A
>> New Hunt's House
>> Guy's Campus
>> SE1 1UL
>> London
>>
>> Phone 0044 20 78488216
>> Fax 0044 20 78486435
>>
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