Miranda dear, this is precisely the point. The review of articles on RG is really a intreresting exchange of views, but how do you find the time to do it systematically? I also made two revisions and from one of them the idea of an ongoing collaboration with a member of the RG is born. So, I agree with you about the usefulness of the project while having your same problems as long to realize it fully.

The papers that I reviewed were:

'Warming of Lower Gangetic Delta Water: An alarming trend' by Abhijit Mitra, Prosenjit Pramanick, Pardis Fazli, Sufia Zaman; and 

'Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Capacity in Bulgarian Plans (dry seeds)' by

Valentina Lubomirova Christova-Bagdassarian, Kristine Samvel Bagdassarian, Maria Stefanova Atanassova

Article Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Capacity in Bulgarian Pla...

Article Warming of Lower Gangetic Delta Water: An Alarming Trend

Miranda dear, this is precisely the point. The review of articles on RG is really a intreresting exchange of views, but how do you find the time to do it systematically? I also made two revisions and from one of them the idea of an ongoing collaboration with a member of the RG is born. So, I agree with you about the usefulness of the project while having your same problems as long to realize it fully.

Dear Miranda,

I believe we should make a more active and creative use of the Open Review feature. The problem with most of us that we don`t have time. I will manage to use this feature very shortly.

Dear friends, Enzo, Mahfuz, thanks.  To make a good review the area has to be within our area of expertise and interest.  Then we have to spend MUCH TIME to consider it carefully.  Otherwise, if we just tick and agree that the research was done correctly, the methodology was right, the data was accurate, and that the study can be replicated etc isn't very helpful to the authors, or to RG.

There are four basic issues, if not more (the first has already been mentioned):

• severe time constraints
• global information overload
• market competition for ResearchGate
• unfamiliarity with many features of ResearchGate

Which one and to what extent each of the issues applies to you (reader) is a highly individual matter. On top of that, all issues are strongly coupled (entangled).

Personally, I am in the fortunate position to have enough time for RG (or rather, to take it whenever I feel so). Surely, interacting through RG with many colleagues in different fields adds to the information overload I'm already experiencing even without RG, but in some way it enriches my intellectual experience and so it has a high priority. Others may decide or prefer other means of sharing ideas, experiences, expertise ...

Market competition for RG is already there and it will increase. Still, RG has some USP's (unique selling points), but it is only a matter of time for other equally creative and innovative people to jump on the bandwaggon and offer highly appreciated features which RG doesn't have (yet). As competition will increase, the differences between and advantages of one over the other will marginalize.

Even for experienced software users like me it takes time to become familiar with all the nice features of a new software tool like RG. Maybe I am unaware of the feature, because I didn't need it before, so I didn't look for it. Maybe I am so busy with the other features, that I don't have time for the rest. Etc. It's not planned how I interact with such software. There is no manual, you have to discover it, or others tell you about it. Etc.

It is good that RG has introduced this feature. My decision to review some paper on it will depend on whether it excites me so much that I give up my other priorities and decide to do the review. I am very sure, I will find such paper some day.

I think, If  RG Score will depends on Review and review report (in a Mark able amount) , then people will take interest...

Thanks Paul for your views.  I do agree; inexperienced people like me have difficulty with #1 and 4 on your list.  After 1 year or more on RG, I haven't explored many features due to lack of time.  My core business is teaching. Perhaps RG could provide a more detailed TOUR to members, what do you all think?

As I have seen a review for an article of RG is not so difficult, since you have just to answer a few questions, after reading the article.

Dear All,

Miranda and Paul Hubert are right: there are some troubles and real limitations:

• severe time constraints

• global information overload

• market competition for ResearchGate ???

• unfamiliarity with many features of ResearchGate

I note I cannot experience the validity of the 3th point.

However, there is still a risk: the possible negative consequences of an honest review by the side of powerful authors, editors and their allies.

I have read some open reviews in RG most of them were eulogies which means that open reviewers are aware of this hazard.

What to do? Anonymity cannot be an option.

Thanks for your views.

@Debi: very true.  I hope you find one wonderful exciting paper that you are willing to drop other commitments, 'give up my other priorities and decide to do the review'. @Andras, I also don't quite understand the 3rd point.  Maybe Paul can clarify for us? @Nishant, even reviewers for journals don't look for extrinsic rewards!  I think there are things we do for intrinsic reasons, as Debi described, thanks.

By contributing, we can make a more active and creative use of the Open Review feature.

Time constraints and patience is all that makes the difference! It all depends on our priorities, likes and dislikes in the first place.

@ András : Indeed, anonymity isn't an option, as traditional peer reviewing with its double-blind review procedure is currently seriously (!) under attack (both here on RG and elsewhere) and there are indeed serious (!) proposals (cf. Elseviers Peer Review Competition I have already mentioned several times) to get away from double-blindness in order to make the review process more accountable and rewarding for those who do a decent job of qualified reviewing. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Proposal for an improved Open Review Procedure on RG

Perhaps we can learn from the distinction between formative and summative evaluation or assessment, well-known in education.

Giving an Open Review of a paper here at RG is a summative review, i.e. it comes after the fact of release, for dissemination and sharing. That's nice for publicity and - perhaps - citation, but it doesn't add value to the paper of the author(s).

Suppose now we have a two-stage procedure:

• In the initial stage, the open review is formative, i.e. it is like an invitation to all those who are interested and knowledgeable, to give more or less detailed feedback to the authors on a fixed list of criteria + some open questions while the paper is still in the process of making. Thus the authors can use the feedback to correct any errors, to provide any missing details or to improve readability und comprehensibility;
• in the final stage, only those who have participated in the initial stage are also entitled and invited to do the summative review, after the authors have taken care of all the constructive feedback in the first round. Thus the reviewers have a real interest to do the final review of the paper because they have actively contributed to its final form and content. Authors may wish to mention those reviewers also in an "acknowledgement".

Although I think this is a fair and constructive process (a win-win-situation), there will surely be possibilities for "creative scholars" to misuse it. We shouldn't be too much worried about that for the moment, otherwise we could as well stop thinking about any improvements in scientific publication.

Thanks for your views.

@Paul, I like this idea, 'get away from double-blindness in order to make the review process more accountable and rewarding for those who do a decent job of qualified reviewing'.  That's what I like about the Open Review.  It's open, there's no need for anonymity in this.  

@Asmat, Demetris, do you like doing open review?  I think that it's not just ticking 'Yes' for the questions asked, but being responsible to the authors too.  Thanks.

Open review is a great idea if we can do an honest job. As said earlier, because they are open people to tend to try to appease the person by giving only good points without specifying the problems with the paper. Also to do that kind of review people have to spend considerable amount of time. Are we have that time or willing to spend that time for open review?

Dear Prof N, thanks for a thoughtful answer :)  But the papers uploaded on RG have already been reviewed by reviewers.  There could still be little slips, because we are all vulnerable, not 100% proof against errors.  Thanks.

Dear Paul Hubert,

Your idea and the procedures are excellent. Really! There is but two troubles: It needs a lot of time and it works only among honest and correct people. One must be full with confidence to the outer world to show his/her results to practically everybody before publication.

Hope we find time and energy to contribute this fruitful great action.

The true human, who gives profit to the others.

BTW, Miranda, nice picture about context of discovery! Now, you are certainly also contemplating about the context of justification?

Dear András

I see your point and share your doubts. Perhaps I am just too naive for this world -- hoping to find a peaceful place at least in science :-((

Yours Paulus

Dear Paul Hubert,

If only your opinion were the general among scientists! To be naive means to be candid and straightforward. I feel ashamed of having such suspicions but often I am astonished.

Hopefully, always on the highway of Damascus.

I am not sure if I miss the point. What is the purpose of the open review. Are you talking about open commentary of peer reviewed and published papers? Although one could comment on a paper critically, they are all peer reviewed and published. In doing so, one can establish contacts and collaborators. But we could do this without commenting on it. If someone raise a critical issue in my published paper, and I feel that they were correct or the need to fix it, how can I do it as the paper is already published.  

For example, Behavioral and Brain Sciences(http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=BBS) publish papers with 'open peer commentary'. However, they publish the original paper, along with open peer commentary from 10 - 20 experts from the same domain along with the authors rebuttal, acceptance, or clarification. 

I am not sure if RG would be the right platform for it. What if you publish on something that I have no relation to it, yet I comment on it based on my 'educational guess'. I might be totally wrong, but still I make comments on it. How can one prevent such action in RG? How can these be quality controlled - that is, who can comment on it?

"How can we make a more active and creative use of the Open Review feature?"  Is it really the point? I personally wouldn't give a flying hoot to try and waste my time on any off-the-wall fearture dreamed up by the administration of the site. To me the point would be -- "How we can make a research progress in the respective field?"  And the answer is simple: by DOING that research; then within it one is free to formulate one's opinion on any already publsihed research results  by anybody else. Or making a valid, well argumented and significant comment on those results. Then your research paper or comment will have to be the subject to  the same review scrutiny as the paper on which you decided to make your opinion public.  Isn't that  fair? Any other way to go would be akin to making your opinion written on the wall of some commonly used public facility -- no responsibility, no professional code of research conduct, no obligation to have your opinion well proved,  etc.

And -- how would you make the author(s) of the paper reviewed (e.g. negatively) by you respond to your (critical) review? Without that your review wouldn't worth much; or would it? Or what will you do if that author (just as an example) would post a brief message, something like that -- "My dear friend, I greatly appreciate your review, yet my humble suggestion to you would be that you take a few freshman classes on the subject, starting with 101 on arithmetics..." I am kidding of course, but how good research standards would/could be upheld in that "Open Review"?

The Open Review feature could increase our RG rate if our reviews are  recommended. if they are not recommended, our RG rate could go down. 

Thanks for your views, some of you do not see there is merit in open review.  You have good reasons for your views.  But open review makes me appreciate the effort of those who review our papers.

@Andras, Paul et al.: 'It needs a lot of time and it works only among honest and correct people. One must be full with confidence to the outer world to show his/her results to practically everybody before publication.'  We have meetings within our department to discuss our results before publication; it's our colleagues who help us to improve the quality of research and manuscript, as in pic below.

@ Pandi-Perumal Seithikurippu Ratnas : My proposal was about a kind of sandwitched RG-review which doesn't replace but offers some RG-specific research value which a usual publish+comment procedure in paper journals doesn't offer. It builds upon the core meaning and value of RG: to be a collaborative research community. Whether you feel this is something for you or not, is of course something only you can decide. Apparently, many feel so. And if at least one journal is already practicing this idea of paper+commentaries, why not making it more interactive and open using the facilities of RG?

RG is a so-called Collaborative Community (if you wish, I can give you relevant references, I don't have time now because I just lost 20 minutes of writing an open answer to the respected views of colleague Alexander E Kaplan).

CC's appear to fill a lacuna in the world of scientific and software research and development. We may talk about. Better is to try it out and give serendipity a chance.

We don't have to give up the good things out there, we're creating new opportunities for people who need it (subconsciously). Different people, different researchers.

RG will only do what we propose, maybe not as quickly as we would like or expect, but let's give it a try. See & use the feedback pages.

https://feedback.researchgate.net/

Dear friends, Prithvi, Paul, Andras; some of us happen to be people who value openness and transparency.  As you say Prithvi, 'it is a lot easier to understand a point of view of people when you are allowed to know openly who the authors are and more importantly who your reviewers are'.  We feel that when we are in the know, we are able to clarify things; it's a 2 way process, makes for better understanding.  This is what you mean, right?

But so far I see that RG practices some degree of anonymity.  Read Prof Ljubomir's thread that I put here, thanks

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Anonymity_in_science_What_is_the_reason_for_concealing_identity_What_do_you_think_of_this_phenomenon?_tpcectx=profile_questions

Dear All,

Each idea is worth so much as much can be implemented of it. RG open review is an excellent idea which needs many operating parts: volunteer and competent reviewers with spare time, intention and a necessary accuracy for deadlines; staff of RG making the required organisation. When making reviews a certain part of activity is language oriented task.

Some month ago Michael Brückner had a thread about organising a group of volunteer English native speakers. What do you know about it? Does it work somehow?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Anyone_interested_in_participating_in_an_ESL_Mentoring_Network?_tpcectx=profile_questions

„The ESL Mentoring Network here on RG is an approach to provide effective feedback to ESL speakers, who want to get help regarding grammar, style and vocabulary by native speakers of English.

(1) Native and near-native speakers of English willing to support ESL peers whenever they may find time: please add 'ESL Mentoring' to the topics you are following (edit it on your Info menu).

(2) Native speakers of English, who cannot contribute to the network for whatever reason: do nothing else than wish this network success.

(3) ESL speakers with a request regarding English language: please post your question as usual with the tag 'ESL Mentoring' at least. Do NOT add this topic to your own topic list.

(4) ESL speakers without the need of requests: please follow #2.

Dear friends, thanks for valuable feedback.

@Prithvi, I like your pic very much, thanks.  But I don't agree with this: 'What is more annoying is that we ourselves have to suggest suitable potential reviewers to the journals. How is it anonymous then?'  We can suggest, and I would suggest the author of papers that I cited.  But it's not necessary that the Journal gets them to review our papers.

@Andras: what you described is true.  I said the same on Michael's question about RG opening OA journals.  Does RG want to take on more commitments; it's already providing us with free communication service.  We can get many opinions.  (But I value Science, and I am not always on Q and A because I need to work hard at research and science.)

@ Prithvi Simha  :  "If you submit an article ..., your manuscript is published in a discussion journal in internet, so that you can claim ownership." This is the important point and may mitigate the concerns of András Boszik (see his response to my proposal)

Dear Paul Hubert,

What can I do with my rightful claims if somebody published my idea or results in a peer reviewed respected journal? I had some bad experiences with the first observation and characterisation of some species.

@ Prithvi Simha : what is EGU ?

@Paul Hubert Vossent

> I just lost 20 minutes of writing an open answer to the respected views of colleague Alexander E Kaplan).

Dear Paul, I appreciate your effort (the whole of 20 minutes...!), but can you direct me to that  open answer of yours? Somehow I cannot find it anywhere...

Dear Alexander, I really lost it, it's gone, in the comment you copied my words from I have just summarized quickly what I had written ... (I know there is another sense of lost but I didn't mean that ;-))

Paul, it's fine; the site isn't very stable, and is also full of various little surprises... But then again, "you've got what you paid for...":-); after all, it is a free service...

RG has several shortcomings to be fully useful and their open reviews of articles is but one of them.  I hope to come back to answer this question but as many have stated, time is a restraining factor.  Now that I've had some time to study the site I find several issues that could use fine-tuning--featured publications, skills & expertise, endorsements, question/answer, RG "Score," and others.  I'm in the process of packaging these into a "thread" we can all comment and/or vote on. 

One problem of a more general nature that RG could address immediately and easily is their reference to science and scientific:  "ResearchGate is a network dedicated to science and research. Connect, collaborate and discover scientific publications, jobs and conferences."  Everything on the site refers to science/scientific.  What about the tens of thousands of scholars here whose field is in the humanities/liberal arts?  RG should change the words "science/scientific" to "scholarly" and "academic."  After all, this is the age of "inclusion" but RG makes us humanists feel excluded!

@ John Franklin Wilhite :

"I'm in the process of packaging these into a "thread" we can all comment and/or vote on."

• There is no real need of voting about issues of utility or usability of RG, on the contrary, each voice counts and should be forwarded directly to RG via its feedback page (see link, bit hided on the website).
• The more people complain about the same issue the better. RG staff will sort out and prioritize itself, we don't have any influence on that. But they could be a little bit more open on it.

"RG should change the words "science/scientific" to "scholarly" and "academic."

• This is an issue of language and culture. Europeans understand science and scientific in an inclusive way, i.e. here we don't abbreviate "physical sciences" or "natural sciences" to "sciences", but to "physics" or "chemistry" etc.
• However, even though RG's headquarter is in Berlin, I guess it is the "scientific" background of its inventors that is responsible for this formulation. Thus I agree with you that an even more inclusive term is preferable. Unfortunately, there is already a contender with this name: academia (see link)

https://feedback.researchgate.net/

https://www.academia.edu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResearchGate

Dear John Franklin,

I am eager to see your package. I have but one request: do not start an infinite discussion on fine tuning science/scientific descriptors because we are short of time. Paul Hubert has had already his point about it.

Dear Paul Hubert,

I agree, voting is unnecessary because we are not in a deciding position. As to "science/scientific" descriptors, the discussion has been started about them but I am afraid they are not essential in RG operation.

Dear András: I fully agree. Let's forget it for a while, until RG has got its biggest flaws & annoyances under control (I would have another list, if you would push me).

However, John Franklin reminded us of an important issue on any social network platform: the multicultural dimension that can sometimes hamper or irritate normal conversation and - in the end - acceptance by potential participants.

Dear @Miranda, sorry for late response. Internet problems first, and many fine answers! Dear @Paul, I do agree with your "Proposal for an improved Open Review Procedure on ResearchGate". Two stage open-review process makes sense! Post publication Review may have some impact in that case!

For my part, I am overjoyed to see a thread discussing the strengths and weaknesses, the potentialities and pitfalls of Research Gate.  I am not in favor of sitting around and waiting until "RG get's its act together".  Why would we trust them to do the right thing with this resource?  Sending a complaint to management is no substitute for users pooling and distilling their ideas to improve the site. There are two puzzles, here: (1) Why RG has not set up a family of threads that would encourage users to comment on the site's shortfalls and unexploited possibilities. and. (2), why an RG rep isn't tracking a thread like this one and spurring the discussion on by giving us a view of their decision space and how they are working their way through it.  Last time I looked, RG had quite an extensive staff.  What are they actually doing? 

Is this a Crowd, or not?  Do we believe in the Wisdom of the Crowd?  Or not? 

If we believe in Crowd Brainstorming, then somebody has to solve the problem of thread distillation.  Notice that RG has taken a big step in this direction by making it possible to easily pull out a thread into an ordered editable document.  I know it doesn't sound like much, but I have seen many a brilliant email exchange come to nothing because the participants had no way to make the transition from a correspondence to a document. 

Dear Paul,

Voting does allow each person to have a voice; that's the purpose of voting.  I'm well aware of the feedback feature on RG & have used it.  Discussing an issue in the Question/Answer section does not prevent anyone from using the feedback feature to express whatever they wish.  If you were working your assignment at RG as the "feedback person" which would you prefer?--to gather, organize and respond to thousands of emails, sorting them into hundreds of topics, etc. or to have the topics and suggestions gathered together in one place for you in the question/answer feature on a topic like this one.  I don´t view these as "complaints" but rather as suggestions for improvement.

Should we rely on RG to do this adequately?:  "RG staff will sort out and prioritize itself, we don't have any influence on that."  And I believe we do have influence on changes and priorities that best suit the academic community.

academia.edu cannot copyright words.  There is no reason, and no technical difficulty (search and replace is common, even in MS Word) in RG using a variety of terms:  science/scientific, academic, scholarly, professional on the site.  András, this may not be one of the burning issues but it is one that can be resolved in one day as opposed to weeks or months required to address those more important issues.  Paul provided the reason for the issue (use of science/scientific exclusive of other possible terms) as being one of language and culture, which I suspected was the case, but he did not provide a solution. 

András, Paul, and all,

The "RG Feature Improvement Package" may not be viable as it could become overwhelming for readers and for RG staff to digest and act on.  This question on RG Open Reviews is an example of why I thought of "packaging" questions and issues on most features of RG under a single broad question with specific issues included in the same "thread"/question.  There are numerous questions and many comments on various aspects of academic reviews.  Even with these listed under my "questions I am following" they are in random order.  I have to dig to find the ones referring to reviews.  If RG provided a way of organizing similar topics (like putting them into folders), my "packaging" idea wouldn't be necessary.

I know this is off the topic of the Open Review feature of RG and I apologize but perhaps you all can help me decide the avenue to take.  Let me briefly describe my plan.

The initial question would be very broad, such as:  Do you have suggestions for some features of RG?

In the explanatory section for the question I would list the features to be discussed:  profile page, publications, questions/answers, open reviews, skills & expertise, topics, followers & following, endorsements, RG score, etc.  Then some brief instructions:  Please preface your comments/suggestions with a topic in bold on a single line, publications, for example.  If you agree with the suggestions made by others please click the "upvote" button--this is important for RG to gauge interest in the topic.  If you have some additional points you wish to add to someone's suggestion, it would be helpful to copy and paste the suggestion into your comment.

Finally, I would use individual, distinct "add your answer" blocks to describe the issues of each feature that RG should address.

On the negative side, this could be cumbersome with a lot of responses to each of the sub-questions.  For example, there are 50 responses so far to this Open Review question which in my scenario would be a sub-question.  On the positive side, most issues concerning RG any of us would like to address could be found under one heading rather than scattered throughout the vast question/answer section.

Should I proceed with this?  

Sorry for taking time away from the original question. 

Dear John

• I assume that RG can do its work without relying on us to do part of theirs by filtering, extracting, prioritizing, aggregating and what else. They are the owners of these problems, not we (sorry for this software engineering jargon). We are stakeholders, and they have to take us seriously, even if we are thousands. They are far better equipped than we to handle such volumes of data, because there are nowadays AI and other tools for that. If we would do that "by hand" so to speak, that would take too much time from us, I think. If they would start paying us for this kind of feature development and quality assurance work, that would of course change the entire situation. For instance, they might "pay" all hands-on supporters with extra RG scores, why not (it's a mixture of very different credits anyway).
• What can be done in one day should be done in one day. I'm with you on this point. However I don't see another solution than taking the word "science" all-inclusive, as it derives from Latin scientia which means knowledge or wisdom - without any restriction on the sort of knowledge or wisdom that is being referred to. I don't know any other word or phrase that is both so all-inclusive and familiar to most people. Words like scholar(ship) or academics aren't a solution either, even if I use them now and then, because they sound a bit outdated or highbrow and have their own special connotations. Perhaps It should be made clear somewhere on the site how all-inclusive RG wants to be and that people from all disciplines and research fields are welcome!?

Dear John

our contributions crossed each other (in time). Please don't take my previous comment to be a response to your last comment. I will have to think about that. There is something interesting in the way you want to go ahead. Tomorrow under the shower I may get some ideas to add to it. :-))

I agree with Paul Hubert Vossen's suggestion for RG Open Reviews which I re-post here so that readers don't have to browse many pages and answers trying to find it.  At any rate, it's good enough to be stated again.

Proposal for an improved Open Review Procedure on RG

"Perhaps we can learn from the distinction between formative and summative evaluation or assessment, well-known in education.

Giving an Open Review of a paper here at RG is a summative review, i.e. it comes after the fact of release, for dissemination and sharing. That's nice for publicity and - perhaps - citation, but it doesn't add value to the paper of the author(s).

Suppose now we have a two-stage procedure:

In the initial stage, the open review is formative, i.e. it is like an invitation to all those who are interested and knowledgeable, to give more or less detailed feedback to the authors on a fixed list of criteria + some open questions while the paper is still in the process of making. Thus the authors can use the feedback to correct any errors, to provide any missing details or to improve readability und comprehensibility;

in the final stage, only those who have participated in the initial stage are also entitled and invited to do the summative review, after the authors have taken care of all the constructive feedback in the first round. Thus the reviewers have a real interest to do the final review of the paper because they have actively contributed to its final form and content. Authors may wish to mention those reviewers also in an "acknowledgement"."

I would add:

1.  There is need for a method by which the knowledge/expertise of the reviewer being applicable to the work in progress can be verified.  "Tags" of key words of expertise (there should be a limit to the number used) should be included with the article in addition to or in lieu of content key words.  There should be no way to interact/react to the article until the last page.  On the last page there should be a link:  "To interact with this author/article click here."  If the readers skills and expertise (or a certain number of them) do not match those included for the article there will be a message:  "Sorry, your skills and expertise do not match those of the author/article.  Go away. (ha!)"  For those who are approved for participating the opening page or tab would include, for those who are very, very busy, an up-vote button.  For those who are busy, a few items that can be responded to with a click of the mouse.  And for those with some time to spare, a constructive/formative review.  These reviews should include the up-vote button for others to be able to agree to the suggestions made.

2.  Publications should be divided into published and unpublished.  All unpublished items, articles and books, whether draft (no reviews), draft under formative review, and final draft in summative review should be gathered together by RG, organized, categorized, etc. and listed on a page such as "Manuscripts available for publication."  RG could promote this page to academic book and journal publishers who would no doubt appreciate the time saved in having manuscripts "pre-approved" by RG reviewers.     

Dear Colleagues,

I am an editor-in-chief of a journal. I am also editor of 3 other journals. Additionally, I am an ad hoc reviewer for 20+ journals. Please review my online profile: http://pandi-perumal.blogspot.com

@Frederic Andres; @Miranda Yeoh; @Paul Hubert Vossen; @Prithvi Simha;

Paul, "but offers some RG-specific research value which a usual publish+comment procedure in paper journals doesn't offer".

a. How RG-specific research value is something different from a research value of publishing in a peer reviewed journal? Reviewers evaluate to see if the work was ethically done and it has scientific validity. They will not address what could have been done extra or how it could have been done differently!

b. By the time a paper get published, the results could become outdated or add no special value or minimal impact in a specific area. This is a possibility! For example, people study rodents, cats, monkeys, humans, birds, or insects. We test on various species or genus's and we come up with the same conclusion that this particular phenomenon exists. For example, we might end up saying, 'our results support the views of other findings such as John Doe, 2011 and Jane Doe, 2012. Further research is warranted in this area' or 'Our finding did not support the conclusion derived by John Doe, 2011, probably due to methodological differences, age group, ethnicity, time of administration of the study, or type of instruments used. Further on, our results could have been confounded by the age or sex of the animals or the condition in which the experiment was carried out'. Most of the studies comes with limitations. If you carefully read the manuscripts, you could pick up so many of them listed in the discussion section. How can you account for these issues when it comes to RG?

1. Hypothetically, one of you critique or comment on my article after it was peer reviewed and published, what might be your comments to my manuscript which carry such limitations?

2. There was a study published a while ago by a Harvard faculty, who claimed that 'such' phenomenon doesn't exist in an amphibian. Later on, the same professor did the same experiment and published his result and in fact that phenomenon was observed in this amphibian. 'Perhaps this is due to strain differences'.

c. in RG, when you post your paper, how will you make sure only the appropriate people can only comment on the paper? When it comes to journal articles, they are all peer reviewed. These peers are considered experts in the field. When it comes to RG, I can be unqualified to comment on a topic. But, for the heck of it, I will go ahead and comment it anyways! How will you prevent this from happening? Who is going to control the quality check? When I refute an answer or idea of an author, during peer review, I give my own citation and tell the author that I reject his views based on these articles. In RG, what process can be in place that a commentator could follow such rules.

d. Hypothetically, you commented on an article and favors it. I comment on the same article, and came up with a negative opinion about it. How will you resolve it?

e. Are these work and effort be quotable in a peer reviewed publications? How will you cite these items? who will approve it?

f. @Prithvi Simha, "I feel article publication process must be purely democratic and that the final quality judgment should be left to all readers. If that is the case then why should we leave a few people (albeit experts on the subjects in question) to decide the fate of an article that a researcher works maybe months/years preparing?". I think you're totally wrong! No two researchers think alike and agree with each others. Some one would say, working with rats brain is better and someone would argue cats or monkeys would be better for specific reason. Everyone would have the same reason to believe that they view is correct. Why to give complicated example? I never agreed most of the views of my elders including my dad. I always felt that I was right. Haven't you felt the same thing? If everyone is correct, science cannot move in any specific direction it will move everywhere and anywhere! That will be a collaboration for a disaster! Someone spend so much time on working and preparing a manuscript cannot be wrong? Is that what you think? You're wrong again! They still can go wrong! In the history of medicine, you will see so many examples. Surely I could give you if needed! I am trying to be brief with my explanations. Someone could have worked for 30 years, still they struggle to get funding. This is academic life!

With regards to your example, "The Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) is an open-access journal using open peer review". I am an editor-in-chief of an open access journal. We have the same methods. The point of the matter is, these people are hand picked reviewers for the journals. They are all experts in the field and have the domain knowledge. RG scores never based on domain knowledge or based on their peer reviewed publications. Many of the people who have high scores don't have good publication records, but have high RG scores.

g. @ Miranda Yeoh: "We have meetings within our department to discuss our results before publication; it's our colleagues who help us to improve the quality of research and manuscript, as in pic below". Yes, we all share our manuscripts and funding applications within our research teams and groups. But we don't share with others although we could get valuable inputs from there. This is for a specific reason. What you put out in the internet, I get an idea, and change the research hear and there and do a research and publish a paper. What if I stole your idea? how could you prevent it when you put your ideas out there? Although you might have done the research first, there is always a possibility that most of the article get rejected (or not get accepted in the first time, of course I am talking about a decent impact journals). Anything in the public domain is not copyrighted! If these things were copyrighted (for the sake of argument); if there was a copyright infringement or plagiarism, should I sue the person who defaulted my work or the RG?

h. @Paul Hubert Vossen: "hoping to find a peaceful place at least in science". In science, I don't seek peace. I will ask 'why' peace?. That's what every scientist must do! We must ask questions! Why, What, and what ifs! In science, do you want to excel and do you want to be different? Don't see what others can see...see what others cannot see! 

http://pandi-perumal.blogspot.com

Friends,  I only have mobile internet, now.  Thanks for your views,  but I must be brief.  John,  please check the questions on RG that have been posted already.  Ljubomir has question on endorsements and Ahed also has asked questions about RG features . I think no one has asked about open review.  That's why I'm doing so. I learn many things.  Please let me get back my proper internet.  Thanks. 

@ Pandi-Perumal Seithikurippu Ratnas : We don't need a RG-replica of the traditional peer reviewing process, which has enough problems and issues of its own (cf. the many discussios here on RG, and the book that I recommended here). What we need is something different, a different concept, a different approach. Think out of the box! Give serendipity a chance! If you start from a fixed idea about what publishing should be and look like, we will not be innovative any more. Please also have a look at Elsevier Peer Review Competition Award (which I mention here for the 5th time I guess). They know that they have to change something, but apparently established publishers need sooooooooooooo long time to implement even their own awarded ideas. So let*s do it here, why not?

@ Prithvi; "too many cooks spoil the broth". I mean this from your democratic point of view. I have one such publication of my own. The publishers got opinion on one of our review that I published many years ago. It had at least 7-10 reviewers for this paper. I initially received 3 reviewers comments, while other reviewers were 'working on it'. Subsequently, the editorial office emailed further comments. I was astonished to see how people view things. One reviewer suggested change this, We changed it and waiting for the other reviews. When other reviews came, they suggested something related to the one that was mentioned elsewhere. If we change the statement in the second place, it will not make any sense in the place we made change in the first place. It was a total mess! When I submitted my final revised version; I have to clearly pointed out, why I didn't change, what is the rationale, etc. etc. As you know, when you resubmit your paper, you have to address point by point what you have changed and how you have addressed the concerns of different reviewers in the revised version. It is too much time consuming if you have multiple views by reviewers needs to be taken care of. Additionally, even before we submit a paper, we do know, what the strengths and weakness of our publications (e.g. small n; sample size was not calculated at the initiation of the research, postmortem analysis of the results and trying to find a rationale, insignificant result showing a tendency towards significant and the result is not significant, cross sectional study, which might not applicable to other studies in general. One can keep on listing such limitations in a paper.

Don't get me wrong! My point of argument is, it is not about resilience for change but for me, the reasons are not convincing enough that warrant a change!

When we get an innovative idea, we do a pilot study or a proof of concept study to show that, in fact, the idea works! Not necessarily it is a fool proof idea, but better than the existing idea in the field! Then comes the adaptations and innovations!

each of us gets a hundred attention points in a life time. When we have an idea, we get to invest some proportion of our attention points.  So, for instance, I would say, that this idea, this one I am offering now, was worth, say, ten of my life time points.  Now that's quite a lot of points, and you might (or might not) pay attention to it accordingly.  And, if I was running out of attention points, and  some of you thought this idea was really really good, you might loan me some of your attention points.  Once I have used up all of my attention points, I cannot post any more. 

N

Dear Prithvi, et al., thanks for telling us about some things you came across:

'Another contribution to this increasingly interesting thread which I came across in the Nature Peer Review Debate Blog.  The Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) is an open-access journal using open peer review. It was launched in 1997, making it one of the earliest experiments in open reviewing.'

I sent an article in January to a local Scopus journal (no IF), revised it, but I still haven't heard yet.  So it's about 6 months already.

@Nicholas Simonds Thompson, thanks for kind comments on this thread.

'For my part, I am overjoyed to see a thread discussing the strengths and weaknesses, the potentialities and pitfalls of Research Gate....There are two puzzles, here: (1) Why RG has not set up a family of threads that would encourage users to comment on the site's shortfalls and unexploited possibilities. and. (2), why an RG rep isn't tracking a thread like this one and spurring the discussion on by giving us a view of their decision space and how they are working their way through it. Last time I looked, RG had quite an extensive staff. What are they actually doing?'

Dear Sir, after being in RG a while, I realized that the purpose is to allow researchers like us some ease in communication, get some good opinions from other researchers who have more experience and resources.  But RG isn't communicating much with us now, as it used to, please see my comment #31 on attached thread.  RG isn't spurring on our discussions.  It's ok, we can do that ourselves :)

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Improvements_in_RG?_tpcectx=profile_answers

@Pandi-Perumal Seithikurippu Ratnas, thanks for sharing your experiences. I appreciate this.

'One reviewer suggested change this, We changed it and waiting for the other reviews. When other reviews came, they suggested something related to the one that was mentioned elsewhere. If we change the statement in the second place, it will not make any sense in the place we made change in the first place. It was a total mess! '

In January I sent 2 papers to 2 journals.  One of them, on collaborative learning, is already published, after I made some corrections to improve the paper.  As for the other, I made corrections and re-submitted, but I haven't heard from them yet.  So what you said about reviewers is true.

Prof Nicholas Simonds Thompson, I don't quite agree that 'each of us gets a hundred attention points in a life time' and that 1 post costs as much as, ten of life time points. But it's an interesting idea.  Now you may not agree (and don't have to agree) with me on my next statement that the number of ideas and questions we may ask on Q and A is infinite.  

Have a good day, dear friends.  I don't always have internet access; but I have mobile internet that sometimes works like a paper origami airplane.

@P-PSR :

"h. @Paul Hubert Vossen: "hoping to find a peaceful place at least in science". In science, I don't seek peace. I will ask 'why' peace?..."

I totally disagree. Peace has a long tradition - implicitly or explicitly - in a philosophical conception of science (cf. e.g. Plato, and also many Eastern philosophies) and in many of the more logical approaches to it (cf. e,g, the Vienna Circle). And even in more mundane, practical and down to earth research areas one of the driving motives is peace, e.g. the Club of Rome and similar noble initiatives. Or think of famous scholars like Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, ... So wherever you look : from philosophy, methodology, applied research, biography, ... everwhere you can find close connections and references to peace. Thus I feel I am in good company.

"... That's what every scientist must do! We must ask questions! Why, What, and what ifs!

Are we in the quiz business? No! Asking good questions is certainly a major competence of mature scientists, scholars and researchers, and thus one of the primary teaching and learning goals in academic education. But scientific work goes far beyond this first step. We have to find answers too! And that means: choosing the right methods (which is far more complex, as there are many competing and conflicting ones without objective criteria to say which is the better one), analysing and criticizing all previous answers to bring it to the one crucial point to figure out, doing research - systematic as well as by trial and error, again analying and criticizing what we have found, etc. etc. Just to conclude, at the very end, that our initial question wasn't any good at all .... Anyway, much more important than Q&A are the theories and models we create to make sense out of the half-truths we have found up to now.

"... In science, do you want to excel and do you want to be different? ..."

What kind of sport is this!? What does it make with people with an exalted ego? What does it make with people with a more modest, maybe even introvert character? Examples abund, especially in the physical sciences - so I have been told - there are scientists whose only motive appears to be doing something (completely) different irrespective of its degree of utility or truth. Nice examples are also coming from the history of statistics. Probably you know other equally embarassing examples from the social sciences and a host of pseudo-sciences ...

".... Don't see what others can see...see what others cannot see! "

OK, I admit this is somehow nice, at least for a moment. But then look at the bigger picture. In order to proceed from there, you have to communicate and disseminate your ideas and discoveries to your fellow researchers and colleagues (otherwise it is not science as we usually fancy it). That can be damned hard frustrating work! Because what you have seen is so strange (conflict of paradigms), out-of-the.box (innovative), and all that. Or because you don't get access to and acceptance by the established societies and clubs, conferences and publishers, etc. Or just because of jealousy or fear of collapse of someone's own position - it all seems to happen also in science and research, because yes ... scientist are also humans! But you don't have another chance: you have to communicate and disseminate in order that other scientists or professionals can profit from it.

@ Nicholas Simonds Thompson : "There are two puzzles, here: (1) Why RG has not set up a family of threads that would encourage users to comment on the site's shortfalls and unexploited possibilities. and. (2), why an RG rep isn't tracking a thread like this one and spurring the discussion on by giving us a view of their decision space and how they are working their way through it. ...?"

There is a rationale behind this. It's a bit like the difference between using a natural language e.g. English to discuss let's say psychological or biological or philosophical questions VERSUS using the same natural language to discuss ITSELF. We call this linguistics.

ResearchGate is first and foremost about scientific questions to be discussed among scholars, scientists and researchers. It's not about meta-questions about ResearchGate itself.

Using RG to reflect about its own features and non-features, its usability, utility or business goals and values is something we call application development and evaluation. It's mostly done by specialists trained in requirements analysis, usability analysis or business computer science.

Still, if you really want to, you can participate in an open discussion about almost any aspect of this social network platform by means of its vivid feedback forum. Many RG members are doing that already about many issues, see statistics:

https://feedback.researchgate.net/

There are extremely user-oriented software companies who practice a very open policy regarding what they have just improved or are up to improve in their software. But - sadly enough - such companies are scarce. Here is an example of how such user notifications from a development team could look like. I appreciate it very much! Needless to say, they also receive very often user requests about needed features or other improvements.

It seems to be a good idea.  A shorter time means less stress for author/s and reviewers. If it's open review, nearly all matters can be clarified openly. I would favor a system that reduces plagiarisms, reduces stress, promotes ethics. But like you Prithvi, I need the foresight and advice that experienced reviewers on this thread can provide.

Dear Prithvi: Here is how deeply entrenched is the ritual of peer reviewing especially in certain parts of the world and with the elderly scholars and scientists among us.

Some months ago I submitted a contribution to a small specialist conference (not a journal!). It was not the first time I wrote about the subject - on the contrary - and IMHO it contained definitely a lot of innovative ideas.

The paper was of course reviewed, by three reviewers, I guess and hope in double-blind fashion. Although there were mostly positive reactions, there were also some critical remarks, most of a formal nature, which I could have "repaired" easily if I had gotten the chance. I wasn't, the proposal was rejected.

When I questioned and criticized the soundness of the decision (by listing all the good marks I got), an older colleague of mine (professor) shrugged his shoulders and simply said: "Don't forget, Paul, reviewers are always right!"

Is this the kind of democracy we deserve and want in science!?

@ Paul, I am not here to convince anyone, and I don't need to! I just articulated my point of view explicitly! Whether you agree with me or not....I stand by my words!

I thought your argument was more of a personal attack rather than a well-deserved argument. For example, "Are we in the quiz business?" and "What kind of sport is this!? " just to give some example.

Have you ever had a good student with an inquisitive mind, who wants to know more and ask questions to learn as much he/she can? Do you like such personalities? 

You have identified part of my sentence as correct, but identified the other part as wrong. How could that be?

In your logic, what you have done is misinterpretation of about the word 'peace'. A certified yoga teacher who do medication and yoga, possibly cannot be against 'self-peace'. I am referring myself here! I am not against 'peace' per se; but what I was your idea was wrong but not Plato or Chomsky! What you misunderstood was 'world peace' vs. 'self-peace'!

when I write these line..I recall the Gestalt prayer

"I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you, and I am I,

and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.

If not, it can't be helped".

(Fritz Perls, "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim", 1969)

Paul, I respect your ideas! Everyone has the right to feel the way they feel! We both don't need to either convince each others! It's just that we are two different people. We listen to same music...but hear two different beats...We cannot help each other! Good luck!

Not meant as an attack, dear Pandi-Peramul, but I have to admit that I was surprised and felt attacked by the very words you used. I accept that your intention was different, but ... using a purely verbal medium like this discussion platform it was difficult to say. It reminds me of the (original) Turing Test, which has been criticized by some people - rightfully so IMHO -  for reducing 'intelligence' to 'verbal communication'.

What I intended, in hindsight, now that you ask me, is to make visible for everyone (as you prompted us) the extraordinary span of different personalities and motivations within science and research - some of which coincide with (y)our ideas, others don't.

How large this span really is, isn't obvious or appreciated always/by all, as we tend to circle in - mostly unaware and unintentionally until we start to reflect about it - into a fraction of it, for good or for worse. Trivial example I already expanded upon elsewhere: many researchers, especially those in US-english speaking countries or working in physics and related disciplines, believe that only 'natural science' is properly called 'science' and other kinds of science should be called differently. Trivial? Well, there was a serious question about RG's mission statement only referring to science. Not so trivial after all?

Having said this as an excuse for my verbal irony (I know that I have to be more careful with that here, given that there is no non-verbal channel to mediate  it), one thing still puzzles me, and maybe you want to comment on it a little bit more.

For all what I know, the basic or main purpose of science is to find out about and reconstruct human's common reality. The emphasis here should be on common: it is a shared world, so that we human beings can build upon a common understanding and means of communication (without having to always start from scratch, including wars of arguments, religious or not). I don't have to explain at large what the extraordinary advantages of such a common framework would be (alas, we don't have it yet), even in the extreme case that this common construction would be far away from what physicists call 'reality'. It is not only rational, it is also very practical and economical, and serves certain basic social purposes and human needs.

The point of my puzzlement is: How does this fit in with your views which to a large extent - emphasized clearly by your Gestalt prayer which I remember very well from my psychology studies ;-) sound rather solipsistic, don't they?

Again (see above), this is not meant as an attack, but as a serious question to find out about your position re the meaning and purpose of science and research, which again is important to know in the context of this disucssion about Open Review. For, if science and research only serve an individual curiosity and only have a personal truth, for instance, then why should we bother about reviewing etc. at all?

Friends, thanks for your posts and views that you have expressed here.  From what I see, we can make the best use of all the features that RG provides us, including Open review.  But I don't think it's wise to ask for other things, from RG.  We may think that RG can provide so much that is good for researchers/ authors like us, but our ideas may not be feasible to RG.  Thanks again.

You are very right, Miranda, but IMHO that's not a failure of RG. It is a failure of the (?) scientific community as such. But ... perhaps there is a positive side to this failure ... please read further.

If all scientists would be speaking with one and only one voice, if they would completely agree on how science would have to be construed, conducted, validated, shared, communicated, reported, applied etc. etc. and this agreement would be stable over a long time, RG would very probably seek, find and offer a technical solution for our wishes. But ... if such a unitary view and practice of science would exist, others would have done that already ages ago.

We have to live with it: science itself is as plural as mankind itself. It is not only incomplete (already Socrates said that in his typical humble way), it is also incoherent, inconsistent and scattered. There may be beautiful islands of coherent wisdom and practice, but that's evidently not the big picture, in no way in the empirical sciences. That's more of a caleidoscopic panaroma. Look at what is all on RG or Google Scholar!

Is that necessarily bad? No, not at all! It means there will always be work and fun for so many people who want to devote their inquisitive mind and soul to science, knowing (but ignoring) that there is also this ugly side of the scientific enterprise: all those human faults named by words starting with "mis...".

Happy weekend, Miranda!

Dear Paulos, I agree with you entirely on this:

'If all scientists would be speaking with one and only one voice and this agreement stable over a long time, RG would very probably seek, find and offer a technical solution for our wishes.'  Thanks Paulos and friends :)

To make comments and review a published paper is very much time consuming, since it has been published following whole process of peer-reviewing, revisions, editing and formatting. It is just to share your opinion, thoughts and conveying value of the paper being reviewed by you on RG

Thanks Kuldeep and Ruchi.  If there are papers on RG that I like and I know the authors quite well, I will send them a message that I will review their paper.  It's just that for each of us, it's hard to make the time.  (Yesterday, I traveled to Perak, the state in the north to attend a science education symposium in a private university.  Very interesting, and I met several very creative people.  But all this robs me of time, I was out for almost 18 hours.)

"What is the purpose of science and research?"  The scholars of the 18th-century Enlightenment, who "invented" most of the modern scientific disciplines that many of you specialize in, would answer with one of their foremost guiding principles, "the diffusion of knowledge to all for the betterment of mankind."  It would seem that the cumbersome review process as it is traditionally practiced hinders that laudable purpose.

Friends, it's a great gift to have a public holiday on a Monday!  That's because our Independence Day was yesterday 31 August.  And I managed to do a lot of work, including a 3rd open review.  I enjoyed it greatly.  Below, I attach the paper and my simple review.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256438321_Dodgy_doctorates_-_an_analysis_of_Germany%27s_plagiarism_crisis?ev=prf_pub

Article Dodgy doctorates - an analysis of Germany's plagiarism crisis

Perhaps I am not the only one who has realized that RG features keep changing from time to time.  Peer review is now interesting in that I can bring in files and papers that are in line with my review of a research paper on RG.  At times, I feel a lot of satisfaction reviewing papers instead of being on Q and A.  Some recent reviews...

Chapter A new generation: Profiling Hong Kong tertiary English learners

Article Ethnobotanical study on medicinal plants used by Maonan peop...

Article Knowledge Management-Enablers and Barriers: A Questionnaire ...

Conference Paper MEDICINAL PLANTS: GENETIC DIVERSITY, GENETIC EROSION, COLLEC...

Dear friends, now we have the new RESEARCH FEEDBACK feature.  I find it very interesting to increase my knowledge in various fields like Math, Physics, Engineering, Humanities.  I think that it's giving me more opportunities to be more inter disciplinary in my outlook.  In fact, it has taken up that little time that I usually use for Q and A.  But I do come back when I can manage.  

This whole day, my students have been coming to see me at my cubicle during my free time.  After 3 years of dry performance, they are doing well for biology!  I thank God who gave me the inner conviction to carry out this research, and I thank Enzo, and all of you!

Article Motivation and Achievement of Malaysian Students in Studying...

I do suppose that some researchers do not use an open review feature because they rather communicate privately (in-mail, e-mail, letter...) . What do you think about?