Journals were historically important in disseminating work and in organising peer review, feedback and curation. These are important functions and the hard work that we put into them is not wasted, but it is inefficient. We do not need journals as they exist now. With preprint servers, publication and dissemination is a solved problem. There are already multiple solutions for post-publication peer review and paper recommendation, and there are many active projects exploring alternatives. We need to find a way to maintain the good things about the current system while getting rid of the harmful aspects.
So he skirted the whole covid experience, and useless peer review incidents.
How brave.
The whole system needs to be overhauled.
During my time as a grad student, I read numerous papers. Some where useful and easy to read. A lot were dreadful and, at times, incomprehensible. I’m sure many of the latter were simply cranked out to add to someone’s publication list as part of their tenure review or grant application.
I’ve heard stories of how papers are sometimes reviewed. A colleague of my Ph. D. supervisor apparently examined one by first taking it out of the envelope, glancing at it for a minute or so, and then putting it in another envelope before laying it in the “Out” basket.
Then there’s the aspect of review bias. Unless one has the “right” names as co-authors and/or are affiliated with the “right” institutions, the chances of being published in a prestigious journal are slim.
Oh, and by the way: don’t be too original. Someone might not understand what’s being described or will be tempted to write off the work as rubbish.
A little late bud.
They shouldn’t have been bought by politicians corruption to keep a false narrative going as they generated a multitude of fake journalists stories that was very harmful for information of checking facts…
Not taken over with opinionated facts…meaning they lied to the public for decades now.
Peer Review should have been to make sure the authors claim is factual to the narrative and data presented.
The author appears to have missed the principle reason for undertaking peer review: the opportunity to shaft potential competitors for reasearch grants – especially newcomers to the field.
Yup. On top of that, no external funding, no tenure. One’s department wants its cut from whatever money one brings in.
Universities are now money-harvesting machines. One difference between an academic researcher and a prostitute is that the latter likely has to pay for her own red light.
Interesting read. Echoes a couple sentiments a friend of mine (retired neuro-psych prof) & I have discussed. The system has been broken for some time.
When I was a grad student back in the 80s, I reviewed several papers as part of my paid work for being an assistant to a professor. The system was already broken by then. And the ‘Net has changed academic publishing forever, whether for good or ill.
Peer review seems, today, to simply function as a method of reinforcing groupthink.
Yep. It’s right up there with “fact checking”.
Like lice, they’ve burrowed into everything.
Yup. I noticed that at one conference I attended. I sat in on one session and there were several presentations made. Except for different faces and, maybe, different graphs, they were almost identical.
So much for originality.
Conference papers aren’t usually fully peer reviewed.
Rather they are simply accepted or rejected with edits. Depending on the number of papers submitted, the standards can be quite low.
with edits => without edits
Oh, the ironing.
My point was that the presentations were interchangeable. Seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.
I’ve sat through a thousand or so talks that were a waste of my time.
But that doesn’t have much to do with peer review.
My original point is that peer review does reinforce groupthink, with the papers presented at conferences clear evidence of that. A lot of conference papers are eventually published in journals.
Like I said, seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.
I saw that peer reviewers often miss duplication. For example, my first graduate supervisor shamelessly padded his publication list. He took a set of data (likely which some poor grad student toiled to produce–without credit, of course), divided them in half and produced 2 mediocre papers instead of a good one. Then he took one of those subsets, split those in two, and produced yet a third.
They were all published in different journals, thereby disguising what he did.
Sorry, but peer review is simply a rubber stamp.
BADR:
I don’t know why you keep bringing up conference papers. They are not peer reviewed in the normal sense of the term. Often anything that looks reasonably scientific is accepted as is.
And so far as peer review missing duplication, yeah it’s not perfect. In your case, the edictor likely did a poor job of finding competent reviewers. But peer review does not have to be perfect to still be valuable.
I mention conference papers (and I’ve seen some slob work by proceedings editors when it came to compiling them) because they, after presentation, are often revised and repackaged for journals.
As for that supervisor I mentioned, he was an example of much of what’s wrong with the entire academic system. He likely did some decent work early in his career, just enough to get tenure, and then decided to do whatever he liked after that. He established his reputation, got his seat at the golden hog trough, and was, therefore, unassailable.
You seem to be lashing out at the entire academic system.
Me, I’m just addressing the value of peer review.
Peer review is part of the academic system. It’s what help give people who would, otherwise, be considered useless and incompetent jobs for life.
In my experience, there are far too few academics who’re worth their paycheques. If it wasn’t for tenure, and the peer review of the publications they produce in order to become eligible for it, they might actually have to go and work for a living.
bingo roaddog.
This is why ‘harm reduction centers’ – legal places to shoot up dope – are hailed as what needs to be done to help dope addicts. It’s a small group of people who all agree with the approach and approve each other’s research for publication in their prefered journals. Any criticism, or alternative research/results, gets turfed. These are evil people.
roaddog nailed it.
Peer review has morphed from a once useful tool into a horribly corrupt system of censorship. And the poster child for this bad behavior is the unscientific propaganda called ‘Climate Science’. Top journal billing goes to alarmist computer games and nonsense studies that use upside down data sequences (Michael Mann’s bullsh!t), while valid research gets kicked to the curb and tenured authors get blackballed, defunded, and later fired. And we can thank the inventor of the internet (not), Al Gore for ruining this once useful system.
roaddog nailed it.
Peer review has morphed from a once useful tool into a horribly corrupt system of censorship. And the poster child for this bad behavior is the unscientific propaganda called ‘Climate Science’. Top journal billing goes to alarmist computer games and nonsense studies that use upside down data sequences (Michael Mann’s bullsh!t), while valid research gets kicked to the curb and tenured authors get blackballed, defunded, and later fired. And we can thank the inventor of the internet (not), Al Gore for ruining this once useful system.
First, why do we have to pay to read peer-reviewed journals when the research is almost entirely funded by the government?
Second, how will researchers get promoted (being a little sarcastic here)?
I’ve done a ton of peer review, and I now serve as an editor who shephards papers through the peer review process.
And it’s extremely valuable.
I have yet to see a paper yet that hasn’t improved as a result of peer review. Often it just means organizing the paper better, making certain points clearer, and improving the figures. But sometimes the reviewers point out flaws at the heart of a paper. The authors usually find a way to address those flaws, resulting in a much sounder paper.
And above all, the rubbishy papers get rejected. They usually end up in a non- or poorly peer-reviewed journal, which are legion. One of the biggest sins is ignoring published research in order to make a paper look more original than it actually is.
So far as the reviewers acting as “gate keepers”, I’ve seen little of that. The editors recognize when a reviewer is being a cumudgeon, and will often tell the authors not to take it too seriously. And the editors typically bend over backwards not to automatically reject papers they don’t entirely agree with, so long as the authors make a strong case and meet scientific standards.
That’s a nice bubble you’ve got going there.
Speaking from actual experience is breaking out of the bubble into reality.
Little gate keeping and no rubbishy papers. Reality seems relative in the fields of medicine and climate change, just to name two areas of research. But I believe you …
I never claimed that peer review was perfect. It still involves people. But it’s far better than no peer review.
The Replication Crisis has entered the chat.
Peer reviewers are not all powerful. They do not have the resources to do a full audit of everything that went into a paper. If a clever researcher wants to commit fraud, say, a reviewer probably won’t detect it if it’s well done.
On the other hand, they might. Bypassing peer has no chance of detecting fraud.
I used to be in that game.
In the last 10 years or so of that the new graduates generally had little idea of doing literature reviews. It seemed that it it wasn’t on CD then it never happened. Now it seems CD has been replaced by Google.
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Killer Marmot:
Please address the long standing peer review problems surrounding so called ‘Climate Science’. I don’t know what discipline you deal with, (and I’m glad peer review still works for you), but the peer review used in ‘Climate Science’ is completely corrupt and useless. Is your head in the sand, or are you willfully looking the other way on this?
Ed
Ya beat me too it…
Precisely.
The truth does not need peer review, only lies.
And if an author tells the truth, but does so in a disorganized and poorly written manner that doesn’t always follow scientific standards, and where the figures are difficult to see and poorly annotated?
Peer reviewers are there to help the authors up their game.
Remind me again what causes stomach ulcers?
That’s ludicrous. Peer review can not guarantee that every paper published is absolutely true and correct, and will never be overturned. Nothing can guarantee that.
I see the problem here. People neither understand what peer review is nor what it can reasonably deliver. Instead they set impossibly high standards for it and then claim it’s a failure for not meeting those standards.
First you issued the statement that you are an authority (I’ve done a ton of peer review etc) so we have no choice but to believe you. Then you write that rubbish papers don’t get published and that there is no gate keeping (both clearly false claims). Now you’re saying we just do not understand what peer review is – that is why we protest. Ignorance.
The reality is that peer review supports gate keeping because the peer reviewers are the gate keepers. A simple example is the ulcer and the inability of the medical researcher to get his research published even when he had the correct answer. No one is talking about fraud – although that also happens.
A “rubbish” paper is one that takes CO2 estimates from thousands of years of ice cores and graphs it onto more recent airborne measurements (without even bothering to annotate that on the graph) and then claiming we have runaway CO2 levels. Climate science is mostly rubbish papers. Same for medical research where something causes cancer in one study, then in the next study it does not, then in the next study it does again.
I’m still waiting for the updated research on cold fusion.
Motorcycle helmets cannot protect you from the heat of atmospheric re-entry, either. When hitting the atmosphere at orbital speeds, the helmet is useless, in much the same way that the political climate has become so Lysenko-ized that peer-review becomes useless. You may cling to your helmet all you like, talk about how it reduces fatalities in bike accidents, but we ain’t riding bikes anymore, pal.
SFR:
By “gate keeping” I mean rejecting papers for improper cause — i.e., the reviewer doesn’t like a result or opinion no matter how well the case is presented.
On the other hand, there are papers that are clearly and objectively of poor quality. A paper that claims to describe novel results when it’s not novel is an example. Or a paper that inadequately describes the methodology employed, so that others have on chance of replicating it.
In the journal I edit for, a rejection has to pass through three layers of editors to ensure that the rejection is a fair one. I had a rejection recommendation turned down when the editor above me thought the paper was salvageable with enough revision.
You can’t publish that.
Are there any eggs the left hasn’t broken in the making of the promised omelette?
The promised omelette always requires the smashing of millions upon millions of skulls.
These journals didn’t practice peer review. They practiced gate keeping. Look at the pseudoscience of climate change for a prime example of this.
Anyone who thinks that some kind of “system” that is free from political interference exists is dangerously naive, and ripe for brainwashing.
This place has become much more censorious than the comment section of YouTube.
A disturbing development, to be sure.
You didn’t know that youtube shadow bans and censors?
Comments are sorted by the spam software. If you don’t think you’ve written anything out of line, it may be that you’ve abused privileges here in the past and have been tagged for it. And entering random letters as an email address and changing your nick with every comment might have something to do with it.
Its the algorithm. I get it.
Meh.. PAL review is more like it.. Tow the line or find your own funding.. We are living in times of witchcraft and wonder weapons.. Its all crap.. Note to self : Its not possible to save the world..
I personally stopped doing review for these unclean journals years ago. You work for them for free and they charge you for the privilege of looking at your own work or seeing your own work published. They are the ticks of academia.
Peer review? Leave that for the House of Lords.