Lots would play by the rules and provide genuine criticisms during peer-review (which will lead to the alteration of the content of course), along with criticisms post publication.
Do you have any experience with peer review? In the most functional fields, peer review does a good job of assessing what is valuable, but provides no improvement in quality. In most fields it demands edits to make things worse.
I have experience with peer review, on both ends, and I strongly disagree with you.* What has your experience in peer review been like? In what field?
(*) Peer review can indeed be quite bad, and I had bad peer review before. But this has been an exception rather than the rule for my papers. I understand that I introduce selection bias by only looking at my papers.
It is often quite good, but it could be vastly better. I remember helping to translate an article into English. It was written mostly by my friend, whom I know to be impatient with phrasing, and in the course of translation he often changed the original text, added caveats etc. The gist of his meaning remained, but it was framed very diffently. Often, however, reviewers are too hurried and point out only the worst mistakes or unclear places.
Perhaps it would be useful to have a ‘malicious revier’, a person unversed in the given field but fluent in data presentation, send his comments to the author before the article is shown to domain experts?..
Do you have any experience with peer review? In the most functional fields, peer review does a good job of assessing what is valuable, but provides no improvement in quality. In most fields it demands edits to make things worse.
I have experience with peer review, on both ends, and I strongly disagree with you.* What has your experience in peer review been like? In what field?
(*) Peer review can indeed be quite bad, and I had bad peer review before. But this has been an exception rather than the rule for my papers. I understand that I introduce selection bias by only looking at my papers.
It is often quite good, but it could be vastly better. I remember helping to translate an article into English. It was written mostly by my friend, whom I know to be impatient with phrasing, and in the course of translation he often changed the original text, added caveats etc. The gist of his meaning remained, but it was framed very diffently. Often, however, reviewers are too hurried and point out only the worst mistakes or unclear places. Perhaps it would be useful to have a ‘malicious revier’, a person unversed in the given field but fluent in data presentation, send his comments to the author before the article is shown to domain experts?..