How are reviewers selected to review a manuscript submitted for publication? - (Dec/03/2012 )
science noob on Sun Dec 9 11:46:24 2012 said:
pito on Sat Dec 8 19:46:36 2012 said:
science noob on Sat Dec 8 01:35:15 2012 said:
Just out of curiousity, has anyone published in a Nature-like journal? Was wondering how rigourous or extensive the publication process is like (from submission, review, revision and acceptance).
Do you get 'invited' to publish in something like Nature or you assume high novelty in your work and give high IF journal a shot?
Also, in reply to Ameya: published scientific content is already very readily available to the general public isn't it? e.g. open source journals, scientific blogs, video-based journals (JOVE). But I can't see how anyone would put say, an unpublished novel work in open space - or at least patent it before you place it online?
It is pretty rigourous... But a big part of the selection allready starts at the beginning: because its so rigourous a lot of people just dont bother to send in their paper anyway. People only send in papers if they know its something special (or have a lot of money).
(not all papers in nature are so spectacular or good)
It costs a lot to publish in nature, so not all labs can afford this.
And you dont really get invited.
about your second question: more and more work is indeed free avaible, but its still not enough! In the future it will become more and more the norm.
(a new idea is the payment you can make to journals to make your paper freely avaible (but this costs a lot, not all labs want to pay for this while the same time they do want to publish in nature for example).
And yes, people will patent it first or just not publish it at all.. (not all things are patented and thus published.. some rather decide to keep the idea (dont share it), use it and not patent it).
And about the open space: researchers should do this more often and especially the wrong things! The problem is that people only publish or bring out things that went ok or are good.
People should also publish those things that didnt work so others can save themself the time to try it out themselfs and fail again!
Especially in tests involled animals this is crucial, you dont want to "waste" the lives of animals for tests allready done and failed.. Sadly just a minority does this.
I find it weird there is no journal created specially for "failed research" !
Well, there are journals just for negative/'failed' results: e.g. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine link: http://www.jnrbm.com/
Yes, there are a few out there.. but hardly anyone knows them.
There should be more awareness of it and a bigger database online for everyone.
-pito-
pito on Fri Dec 7 18:43:37 2012 said:
However: about the "let the people" judge it.. its too wide.. Ok, you said primarily scientists and then the common man later, but how are you going to do this?
Not a lot of scienists will be prepared to judge papers and use their real name (publicly available paper/comments) .. And how are you going to select on who can read/judge the paper at first?
Because, if you open everything for the common man..you will see idiots (for example extreme religious people) entering the debate and causing problems..
And how do you select the scientists in the first place?
Having a limited number of reviewers is bad, but having too many is bad too..
We should have 100% objective reviewers! People that do not make money with research.. So in an ideal world (or at least in my ideal world) we would have reviewers that review 100% . They do not do any research, gather funds, do not work for a lab, they do not need to publish.... their sole job is reading papers in their field and reviewing them and thats it. And from different countries/nationalities because even this might influence reviewers.
They could be people with a MSc degree or PhD that became reviewers right after their thesis or after they did some work in the industry.
So I would not like people that have done a few post docs (or professors) at 1 lab (and even a PhD is allready possibly a problem because they allready have an idea (love-hate relationship) with their/other labs.
One thing people often tell me is that the papers should be send anonymously to reviewers, but even if this is done: its a small world and they will know which lab wrote the paper in the end..
Well, you dont select who reads the paper first, no priorities, it is just published publicly and each reader/ viewer of the paper.
The YouTube like publication is only to judge impact factor of research, through the scientific crowd as well as common crowd.
For the journal, they just need to have editors to keep a eye on writing style, length etc. Rest will be done publicly. This will also allow you to mark/tag labs and researchers that engage only in 'me-too-science' and provide more information when allocating funds.
-Ameya P-
Ameya P on Tue Dec 11 08:40:25 2012 said:
pito on Fri Dec 7 18:43:37 2012 said:
However: about the "let the people" judge it.. its too wide.. Ok, you said primarily scientists and then the common man later, but how are you going to do this?
Not a lot of scienists will be prepared to judge papers and use their real name (publicly available paper/comments) .. And how are you going to select on who can read/judge the paper at first?
Because, if you open everything for the common man..you will see idiots (for example extreme religious people) entering the debate and causing problems..
And how do you select the scientists in the first place?
Having a limited number of reviewers is bad, but having too many is bad too..
We should have 100% objective reviewers! People that do not make money with research.. So in an ideal world (or at least in my ideal world) we would have reviewers that review 100% . They do not do any research, gather funds, do not work for a lab, they do not need to publish.... their sole job is reading papers in their field and reviewing them and thats it. And from different countries/nationalities because even this might influence reviewers.
They could be people with a MSc degree or PhD that became reviewers right after their thesis or after they did some work in the industry.
So I would not like people that have done a few post docs (or professors) at 1 lab (and even a PhD is allready possibly a problem because they allready have an idea (love-hate relationship) with their/other labs.
One thing people often tell me is that the papers should be send anonymously to reviewers, but even if this is done: its a small world and they will know which lab wrote the paper in the end..
Well, you dont select who reads the paper first, no priorities, it is just published publicly and each reader/ viewer of the paper.
The YouTube like publication is only to judge impact factor of research, through the scientific crowd as well as common crowd.
For the journal, they just need to have editors to keep a eye on writing style, length etc. Rest will be done publicly. This will also allow you to mark/tag labs and researchers that engage only in 'me-too-science' and provide more information when allocating funds.
But if you dont select you do risk that "idiots" out there will criticise it...
The problem is that you need some sort of experience to know what you are talking about.. Thats why we do have "peer review" journals.. The "peer" is important...
I know that most people (not in that field, non scientist) would not bother to read stuff, however, think about papers on evolution etc.. How religious people abuse those papers..
I remember a case were religious people used a transportersystem in bacteria to build a case on their behalf, to support evolution.. And there are scientist out there believing in this crap...
So what if you open the paper for review for everyone?
Also if you let "everyone" judge papers and you do not have a review prior to publication , then how are you going to stop papers with crap in it?
(I know that even without this open system, idiotis out there are abusing papers, but if you make it too open, then you risk too much interference of idiots)
Ex. leelee mde a post in another topic, I quote it here:
leelee on Mon Dec 10 13:31:35 2012 said:
Reminds me of someone I used to work with, who insisted on having her name removed from a paper by one of her previous grad students- he "reanalysed" (I use the term loosely) some data generated while in her lab and his work was TERRIBLE. Despite many conversations first asking and then insisting he change it, he and his new boss did not agree and she didn't want to be associated with his, frankly embarrassing claims. They agreed to remove her name, but it never got published in the end anyway (no surprise there).
WHat if there is no judgement prior to publishing, then papers with crappy statistics or crappy .... can be published and used in other papers..
Not all scientists use papers like they should (not reading them entirely, not checking everything)
Even now with selection some authors use crap references..
An experience I recentely had: I was looking into some literature and 1 paper popped up several times in recent papers as a reference... I tried to locate it (because it was often cited) and after a long search I could not find this paper , found this strange... So I located the authors of that paper and guess what: it turned out that the paper didnt exist at all!
It turned out that it was an abstract from an international meeting (in a little "book" containing all the "papers/research" being presented there), but that it was never presented at the meeting in the end and also never published!
So what happened: one author refered to it , using the abstract as paper, and many other authors also refered to it (most likely simple using the paper that refered to it the first time).
So you see: even with control, there is crap out there...
And its not the first time I find papers that do not exist or that I find references that are not correct
(references that do not exist, references to the wrong paper, references in the paper but not in the list at the end of the paper, wrong dates, wrong conclucions from references, etc...)
Imagine that there would be no control at all...
Now about your "The YouTube like publication is only to judge impact factor of research, through the scientific crowd as well as common crowd"
This I do not get, I see the scientific crow, but the common crowd? What can they say about the "impact" ? Not even the scientist can say a lot about this because what would an ecologist have to say about novel transportsytems in bacteria for example or a microbiologist about novel ideas in the flying dynamics of bats?
Imagine non scientist to say anything about this?
The only people that can judge the impact in a certain field are the ones working in that field.. (too bad this also means that you can have a "fight" between several labs)
And then your last phrase: "
For the journal, they just need to have editors to keep a eye on writing style, length etc. Rest will be done publicly. This will also allow you to mark/tag labs and researchers that engage only in 'me-too-science' and provide more information when allocating funds."
Like I allready said: who is going to check the value of the research if you would only let them check on writing style and lenght?
Besides: writing style and length.. Sometimes I wonder whether its about results or about "writing skills".. I know that a niceley written paper is easier to read.. but at the same time I wonder whether we are not focussing to much on stuff thats not really relevant.
And length: nature requires short reports rather then "real" papers.. SOmetimes this is not ok! Sometimes you need more space/figures to publish something good.
I agree with the idealistic view of being "open" , but realistically speaking we do need some borders!
-pito-