Dear all,
What would you think of a journal that works like this?
1- It is open access.
2- It is free.
3- It is only online.
4- There is not a specific format of the manuscript.
5- Readers should have access to databases.
6- There are not rejected or accepted papers.
7- Everything (at first) is published and the readers are the ones that rate the quality of the article (e.g., each reader can rate the format, the idea, the methods, the results, the conclusions,…).
8- The readers can review and post positive or negative comments about the paper in a public manner.
9- Everyone that wants to comment about some article or rate it should do it from a (previously validated) account (so each comment of an article would come from a known scientist).
10- Fake accounts or manuscripts that are mainly rated as “commercial information” or “not-scientific papers” are removed from the journal.
Of course many issues arise such as how to deal with the presumably huge amount of papers that can be eventually published, who controls the journal (the website), etc.
Perhaps these ideas sound familiar to you, they are based on how “Tripadvisor.com” works. What would be the best and worst things of a “Sciencevisor” model in scientific publications?
(I believe the question: “why would you change the current publication system?” is another topic that deserves another discussion).
Let me apologize if all this has been discussed in RG before.
1- It is open access.
Reasonable I suppose
2- It is free.
Nothing is free, there will be money there somewhere and we probably need to know who is funding it.
3- It is only online.
Progress?
4- There is not a specific format of the manuscript.
This will be confusing unless some parameters are in place.
5- Readers should have access to databases.
Which can result in plagiarism and downright research theft.
6- There are not rejected or accepted papers.
That is a problem with quality and verifiability.
7- Everything (at first) is published and the readers are the ones that rate the quality of the article (e.g., each reader can rate the format, the idea, the methods, the results, the conclusions,…).
Then it is the popular press rather than scientific publishing. The opinions of the public are of little use in evaluating quality.
8- The readers can review and post positive or negative comments about the paper in a public manner.
That will be an invitation to every nut on the planet to join in the debate and as RG itself shows they often get to dominate it.
9- Everyone that wants to comment about some article or rate it should do it from a (previously validated) account (so each comment of an article would come from a known scientist).
There is no way of 'validating' such an account and this contradicts point seven.
10- Fake accounts or manuscripts that are mainly rated as “commercial information” or “not-scientific papers” are removed from the journal.
A good deal of the material in the established sceintific press is 'commercial' there is no such thing as pure science, somehwre there is a commercial interest.
In total this seems like a pointless exercise. Enough garbage is already published in the journals, we don't need another platform for it.
Thank you Farid, David, Avishag and Barry for taking your time to answer. I just want to debate on this topic with people all around the world and with different backgrounds in order to have a more founded opinion on this.
@@@Farid, let me answer to you comment:
"Research needs scrutiny for the progress of mankind. Otherwise, we would not know what has been proved; it is like starting all over again at anytime".
Answer---I fully agree with you. But it is not clear to me why what I have exposed above precludes from having 'scrutiny'. Everything published would be accessible and everyone would be able to 'rate' the research work in different areas (i.e., research question, how data is processed and analyzed, conlusions,...).
@@@Barry, let me answer to some of your comments:
"4- There is not a specific format of the manuscript."
"This will be confusing unless some parameters are in place."
Answer---In that case, people could comment on that and could rate the article as 'poorly written' or something like that, which would decrease the overall score of the manuscript.
"5- Readers should have access to databases."
"Which can result in plagiarism and downright research theft."
Answer---That is a good point indeed. That is something that would have to be considered very seriously.
"6- There are not rejected or accepted papers."
"That is a problem with quality and verifiability."
Answer---As you point out: "Enough garbage is already published in the journals." So it seems the current publication system can't always guarantee quality and verifiability. In what I have exposed above, 'Quality and verifiability' would rely on everyone's opinion instead of only few reviewers. Would this alternative guarantee quality and verifiability? I don't know...(that's why I'm asking)
"7- Everything (at first) is published and the readers are the ones that rate the quality of the article (e.g., each reader can rate the format, the idea, the methods, the results, the conclusions,…). "
"Then it is the popular press rather than scientific publishing. The opinions of the public are of little use in evaluating quality."
Answer---Readers would not be anonymous. So for each research work one could see what other people from the field think about the work done.
In any case, I do not agree that opinions of the public are of little use in evaluating quality specially if 'the public' are other scientists from the same field (those who will likely read the research work).
"8- The readers can review and post positive or negative comments about the paper in a public manner."
"That will be an invitation to every nut on the planet to join in the debate and as RG itself shows they often get to dominate it."
Answer---In such a platform people would not be anonymous. Perhaps that would preclude people from commenting silly things?
"9- Everyone that wants to comment about some article or rate it should do it from a (previously validated) account (so each comment of an article would come from a known scientist)."
"There is no way of 'validating' such an account and this contradicts point seven."
Answer---Don't you think that nowadays it is quite easy to check if someone is a scientist and where this scientist is working (specially if this person works in a University)? It is easy to check on Scopus the research record of a person. I do not see that as a difficult thing to do at first glance, perhaps I'm missing something...
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