<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra">On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 9:06 AM, Stevan Harnad <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amsciforum@gmail.com" target="_blank">amsciforum@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span class=""><div><font face="verdana, sans-serif">On Sat, 30 May 2015, Michael Eisen <<a href="mailto:mbeisen@gmail.com" target="_blank">mbeisen@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</font></div><div><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><font face="verdana, sans-serif">There is no evidence that post publication review can assure quality, I agree. But there is a wealth of evidence that pre-publication review DOES NOT assure quality, and it is absurd to spend $10b a year and delay the open availability of typical papers by 10 months to achieve it.</font></blockquote></span><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br>1. The relevant question is not whether ("pre-publication") peer review "assures quality" (compared to what?) but whether "<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">crowd-sourcing after 'publication' </span><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">can ensure quality <i>at least as well as well as</i> classical [i.e., </span>"pre-publication"] <span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">peer review."</span></font><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>In what way is the current system in which two or three reviewers are recruited more or less at random from a pool of people deemed to be qualified to review a particular article, often something they would not have read otherwise, do so under intense time press, and then reduce the decision to a fairly arbitrary up-down vote for a particular journal, with details of the decision generally hidden from public scrutiny, with no ability for anyone, ever to revisit that decision as additional evidence or perspectives build up constitute peer review?</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif"></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif">2. For years now there has been absolutely nothing preventing every author on the planet from publicly posting their pre-refereeing preprints for feedback on the web. (Virtually all journals have by now dropped the "<a href="https://www.google.ca/search?num=20&site=&source=hp&q=harnad+ingelfinger&oq=harnad+ingelfinger&gs_l=hp.3...1146.5236.0.5397.19.19.0.0.0.0.112.1640.16j3.19.0.ckpsrh...0...1.1.64.hp..11.8.678.0.V5O4Q6DjjK0" target="_blank">Ingelfinger Rule</a>" forbidding that.)</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Nothing except the complete absence of incentives to do so.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif">3. But public posting on the web is not "p ublication" (in the academic sense, which means refereed publication), and feedback on the web is not "peer review."</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Public posting on the web IS publication unless you choose to define it narrowly otherwise as you have done. And feedback on the web from identified scientists in a relevant field or anyone with a valid perspective IS peer review. </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif">(For good reasons, in some fields researchers don't want to post their unrefereed work publicly. Sometimes this is to protect their reputations, sometimes it is to protect public health.)</font></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div></font></span></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif"></font></div></font></span><div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><font color="#333333" face="verdana, sans-serif"><b>Stevan Harnad</b><br></font></font></span><span class=""><div><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><font face="verdana, sans-serif">On Friday, May 29, 2015, Stevan Harnad <<a href="mailto:amsciforum@gmail.com" target="_blank">amsciforum@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</font></blockquote><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/14da0a74f200e99b" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)" target="_blank">Mike Eisen</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"> writes:</span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><blockquote>“I believe we should get rid of publishers… the services they provide are either easy to replicate (formatting articles to look pretty) or they currently do extremely poorly (peer review)… these services are unnecessary… [we should] move to a system where you post things when you want to post them, and that people comment/rate/annotate articles as they read them post publication.”</blockquote></em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">1. </span><a href="http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1580" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)" target="_blank">PLOS</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"> (like other publishers) seems to be charging a hefty price for “services that are unnecessary.” ;>)</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">2. I agree completely that we should get rid of publishers' </span><a href="http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)" target="_blank">unnecessary services</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"> and their costs. But how to do that, while they are still controlled by publishers and bundled into subscriptions in exchange for access?</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">My </span><a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1154-The-Inevitable-Success-of-Transitional-Green-Open-Access.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)" target="_blank">answer</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"> is the one Mike calls “</span><a href="http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1710" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)" target="_blank">parasitic</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">”: Institutions and funders worldwide mandate Green OA (with the “copy-request” Button to circumvent publisher OA embargoes). The cancellations that that will make possible will force publishers to drop the unnecessary services and their costs and downsize to Fair-Gold for peer review alone..</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">3. But I disagree with Mike about </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)" target="_blank">peer-review</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">: it will remain the sole essential service. And the (oft-voiced) notion that peer-review can be replaced by crowd-sourcing, after “publication” is pure speculation, supported by no evidence that it can ensure quality at least as well as classical peer review, nor that is it scalable and sustainable</span></font></div></blockquote></div></div></span></div></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Michael Eisen, Ph.D.<br>Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute<br>Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development<div>Department of Molecular and Cell Biology<br>University of California, Berkeley</div></div></div>
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