The current system of scientific publishing is clearly outdated.
There are issues with the biases, but also with for-profit nature of the system that charges huge sums of money for accessing the work of researchers funded by public grants and reviewed by researchers for free, financed by public money.
Then add to this all those phony journals, that are theoretically peer reviewed, but have very low (or non-existent) standards and accept everything to make money or simply exist because some big-pharma company uses them to publish skewed tests to get FDA approvals, etc.
I think one or two additional special-purpose journals would not really change the landscape.
IMO, what we need is a complete modern infrastructure based on state of the art IT/social networking. One that allows the review of articles even after they officially appeared with an elaborate voting system that factors in the credibility of the reviewers, It should make it possible to add (publish) refutations and the publication of positive or negative attempts of replications, etc and organize the articles with their support/refutations/endorsements in an easily accessible database.
Ideally, such a system could work both as a rating and publication medium, but with the current scientific publishing lobby, it would not have much chance to take off. The only chance is to do this by extending an existing meta-system (e.g. citeseer) with a general discussion/rating/publishing forum, that would allow the publication of critics/refusals/extensions of existing papers maybe even in a peer-reviewed manner.
In the field that I work, I see that the scientific community discusses and generally supports such changes and given all the efforts and progress of the last decade I’d be surprised if we won’t see such (or similar) one or more systems emerging in the next 10 years.
Yes, that would be better, but as yourself note, it’s a big change that’s unlikely to happen in one go. On the other hand, specialized journals are not a novelty, and considering that at least some folks took that specific specialization up, it appears to be more an issue of advertising than invention.
But nobody said this problem should be attacked on just one front. More (different) attempts mean more chances of success, no?
The coolest thing about the visualized experiment journal is that it exploits current computer technology to extend the scope of what a scientific publication means. Provide a new channel to communicate ideas on a higher bandwidth using the new but cheaply and generally available infrastructure of the net.
I agree that starting a journal like you mentioned can’t do any harm.
Still, I think that for the specific purpose you have in mind (replication studies,critics, follow-up) a technologically more advanced solution would be essential. The reason is that most of the studies would be attributes on existing publications and therefore an easily accessible database structure would make scientific discourse much more fluid and transparent. Checking articles for replicated results, criticisms would become much easier and therefore pushing the authors to higher standards, also exposing fake research and journals.
The necessary technology for that does not include much 21st century stuff. A system simpler than the imdb of the 90ies combined with some off-the-shelf social networking framework would easily do the trick. Since there are lot of existing journal databases, I am pretty sure we are going to see several alternative solutions emerging in the next few years for the exact same purpose. In fact, we can already see that to some extent.
I would also see some value of combining a traditional peer reviewed journal structure with such a system to boost credibility of both the system and the journal.
My general opinion is that scientific publishing (more so than popular literature or newspapers) is at the brink of a huge paradigm shift. Just entering the field with an old-fashioned stuff that does not look forward technologically is dead end IMO.
I think one or two additional special-purpose journals would not really change the landscape. IMO, what we need is a complete modern infrastructure based on state of the art IT/social networking.
You may be right, but beware of throwing cold water on Vladimir’s idea. It might just work. After all, arXiv is a simple website without bells and whistles, and look how much impact it had.
The current system of scientific publishing is clearly outdated.
There are issues with the biases, but also with for-profit nature of the system that charges huge sums of money for accessing the work of researchers funded by public grants and reviewed by researchers for free, financed by public money.
Then add to this all those phony journals, that are theoretically peer reviewed, but have very low (or non-existent) standards and accept everything to make money or simply exist because some big-pharma company uses them to publish skewed tests to get FDA approvals, etc.
I think one or two additional special-purpose journals would not really change the landscape.
IMO, what we need is a complete modern infrastructure based on state of the art IT/social networking. One that allows the review of articles even after they officially appeared with an elaborate voting system that factors in the credibility of the reviewers, It should make it possible to add (publish) refutations and the publication of positive or negative attempts of replications, etc and organize the articles with their support/refutations/endorsements in an easily accessible database.
Ideally, such a system could work both as a rating and publication medium, but with the current scientific publishing lobby, it would not have much chance to take off. The only chance is to do this by extending an existing meta-system (e.g. citeseer) with a general discussion/rating/publishing forum, that would allow the publication of critics/refusals/extensions of existing papers maybe even in a peer-reviewed manner.
In the field that I work, I see that the scientific community discusses and generally supports such changes and given all the efforts and progress of the last decade I’d be surprised if we won’t see such (or similar) one or more systems emerging in the next 10 years.
Yes, that would be better, but as yourself note, it’s a big change that’s unlikely to happen in one go. On the other hand, specialized journals are not a novelty, and considering that at least some folks took that specific specialization up, it appears to be more an issue of advertising than invention.
But nobody said this problem should be attacked on just one front. More (different) attempts mean more chances of success, no?
The coolest thing about the visualized experiment journal is that it exploits current computer technology to extend the scope of what a scientific publication means. Provide a new channel to communicate ideas on a higher bandwidth using the new but cheaply and generally available infrastructure of the net.
I agree that starting a journal like you mentioned can’t do any harm.
Still, I think that for the specific purpose you have in mind (replication studies,critics, follow-up) a technologically more advanced solution would be essential. The reason is that most of the studies would be attributes on existing publications and therefore an easily accessible database structure would make scientific discourse much more fluid and transparent. Checking articles for replicated results, criticisms would become much easier and therefore pushing the authors to higher standards, also exposing fake research and journals.
The necessary technology for that does not include much 21st century stuff. A system simpler than the imdb of the 90ies combined with some off-the-shelf social networking framework would easily do the trick. Since there are lot of existing journal databases, I am pretty sure we are going to see several alternative solutions emerging in the next few years for the exact same purpose. In fact, we can already see that to some extent.
I would also see some value of combining a traditional peer reviewed journal structure with such a system to boost credibility of both the system and the journal.
My general opinion is that scientific publishing (more so than popular literature or newspapers) is at the brink of a huge paradigm shift. Just entering the field with an old-fashioned stuff that does not look forward technologically is dead end IMO.
You may be right, but beware of throwing cold water on Vladimir’s idea. It might just work. After all, arXiv is a simple website without bells and whistles, and look how much impact it had.