Rejected Scientific Paper Recycled as an Ad

Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article, The Scientist reveals a curious and probably unique story. Two years ago, a researcher at Brown University submitted a paper to a scientific medicine journal. Then he received a note from the editor saying that his paper would not interest the journal readers. Thinking that his article was unfairly rejected before peer review, he decided to publish a two-page ad with the contents of his paper in the same journal. He even asked readers if they thought the contents interesting and received 33 positive replies. Read this summary before telling me what you think and if you've heard about a similar story."

Comments

33 replies of Interesting....

[zappepcs]

Hmmmmm
To some folk in the world, 5 hurricanes in a row in one small part of the world is considered "interesting".....

Skipping past peer review sort of invalidates the point of being some of the journals, doesn't it?

Hey, if you have something to say, we all want to be heard, but paid distribution of your comment may always be seen as self-promoting.

In either case, did anyone figure out if he was right?

If no-one else seems to be doing it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think _I_ have to get my hands on this Roland Pigfucker and quite simply murder him. I want to get rid of his shitty stories already! God damn editors! Wake up! No-one wants Rolands retarded content-free-overrhyped-shit-articles.

ahhhh!!!!!!!

[deglr6328]

FUCK YOU ROLAND! FUCK. YOU. I have posted here for 6 years, submitted and had accepted many stories and have excellent karma so I don't care if this one, out of character post loses me a few karma points. Every damn time I click a link in a story without first looking at the submitter and find myself at your uninformative useless advert vehicle of a "website" (and this is an often occurrence) I feel like I've been trolled. The fact that you have the shameless audacity to ask the readers of your submissions to "Read this summary before telling me what you think and if you've heard about a similar story." is vile and scummy. I have heard and previously agreed with all the "who cares it's just a dumb /. submission by some loser" appeals to better temperament but this has got to be like the 20th time this has happened and it really get's my goat. You are trolling your own readers for advertiser cash and that is disgusting. I don't know if you give kickbacks to Taco or what (or maybe they just don't give a shit), but the fact that /. keeps posting your non-stories reflects extremely poorly on the status of any journalistic integrity /. claims to have.

Fucking Editors

[Punboy]

They dont fucking look at the links anymore. They've gone lazy. Its like "Hey look! Science -approve-." Seriously. This guy has a shameless advertisement in a link. This should NOT be allowed. I voted that we have the llama that was responsible for approving this add sacked. And we should NOT sack those responsible for sacking the llama. Ok, im done with the Monty Python jokes. Seriously, this needs to stop.

Re:Years

[Kalak]

I don't understand the backlash in this case. If someone else is covering the story, link to it and remove the need to click to his site. Then I'd say the complaining would be fair. In this case, no one seems to have done that. That's a major difference between Groklaw and /. Here, users bitch and complain. There, you get links to the absolute source wherever possible. Got a link to the source? Please give it. I'd love to see it. Hopefully it will have more detail. If not then, maybe it's possible that Roland has created a story this time.

Slashdot rarely produces any new content either, and is now an ad/subscription based site. Why are we still here if they are just putting together other people's stuff and "selling it".

You can still just:
echo "127.0.0.1 www.primidi.com >> /etc/hosts
(or the windows hosts file if you're using a Windows based OS)

Without this story being pointed as coming from somewhere else, I linked to his site to read it. The entire controversy with Roland seems to echo what the story is about anyway - Who controls what is seen in a "peer reviewed" publication. /. is peer reviewed - by the editors. Complaints about Slashdot echo complains about the peer review process in the story. I'm not a Roland fan boy, but until someone produces credible links to refute that this is his, I say it's worth linking to. I know I would have not have heard of this incident without this story, and as someone who has published (limited) works, I find it relevant and interesting.

In short, give me a reason to dispute that *this* story it not appropriate for the Science section of Slashdot, and not based on the name of the submitter, or the editor who posted it.

Sweeping changes are due anyway

[Deanasc]

With the NIH insisting on open access to any papers published on research they've funded and a general call by scientists to open up free access to older journals we'll be seeing a change in the journal system of publishing very shortly. With electronic publishing of the text alongside the paper copies there's really no reason not to open peer review up to everyone who reads the article.

I think that any paper that meets a journals criteria should be put online and any interested party can vote as to the merits of the piece. The best and most interesting papers will become featured and the worse will be put to the back of the que. Papers that are so far advanced that their merits aren't recognized for years will have the option of becoming featured when they meet a threshold of other papers citing them. Papers that become seminal can be bound once each year for more perminant archiving. Nothing is lost in this system and no paper is rejected because one or two reviewers are jealous or don't quite understand the authors intent.