Faculty Votes For Open Access Policy At UC San Francisco

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Faculty Votes For Open Access Policy At UC San Francisco

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 25, 2012 @01:32AM from the setting-an-example dept.

Marian the Librarian writes "UCSF is among the first public institutions to adopt an open access policy, and is the largest scientific institution to have such a policy. The policy, voted unanimously by the faculty, will allow UCSF authors to put electronic versions of their published scientific articles on an open access repository making their research findings freely available to the public. Dr. Richard A. Schneider, who led the initiative, said, 'Our primary motivation is to make our research available to anyone who is interested in it, whether they are members of the general public or scientists without costly subscriptions to journals. The decision is a huge step forward in eliminating barriers to scientific research.'"

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University of Alabama retaliates by crazyjj · 2012-05-25 01:32 · Score: 3, Funny

UA faculty voted unanimously today to restrict all university research to millionaires and large corporations only.

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What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Good, now... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 01:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

Now, let's get other big institutions on board with this, and then let's turn to the problem of journals. We really do not need journals anymore; their primary function is to distribute papers to other researchers, which can be done online, and peer review and editing can be done by professors at universities (and this is frequently the case anyway -- often unpaid). The Internet connects researchers to each other, so why are we not using it to accomplish these goals?

In any case, this is a good first step.

--
Palm trees and 8
1. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 02:00 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Yes, but without journals, how will we per-judge the quality of others' work? This may sound facetious, but it's not. Any fool can write a journal article, and many fools can write compelling article. A journal offers getting and review by members in the field. How else can I judge the validity of a paper, especially if I'm not in the field myself?
2. Re:Good, now... by MickyTheIdiot · 2012-05-25 02:00 · Score: 2
  
  Good luck. Most Universities are FILLED with corporate kissasses.
  I've worked at a few. The people at the top wearing suits are no different than the people at the top of the corporations wearing the suits, nincompoops that have mastered the Peter Principle.
3. Re:Good, now... by MickyTheIdiot · 2012-05-25 02:02 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  The Internet already made this point moot, friend.
4. Re:Good, now... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 02:07 · Score: 3, Insightful
  Which I addressed in my post, but for clarity:
  
  Peer review is often unpaid under the current system
  You do not need a journal to organize peer review when researchers can communicate with each other rapidly on the Internet
  --
  Palm trees and 8
5. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  No, you're not being complete. In order for open access to replace journals, there must be a rigorous, transparent method of peer review. A good journal definitely has a good peer review process, but how would I know if an article posted online has been peered review? perhaps you propose a public discussion system, but then every article is like an entry on slashdot :/
6. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 02:21 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  no, the internet has made this question more relevant than ever. In a time of free and rapid dissemination of information, how can we judge the validity of that information. This is especially important if you're going to suggest supplanting a peer reviewed journal with open access. I await your answer!
7. Re:Good, now... by nedlohs · 2012-05-25 02:28 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Did you just not see the "peer review and editing can be done by professors at universities " part what you are replying to?
  The basic model of journals (not all use it of course) is:
  * Papers are submitted with no payment to the authors.
  * Papers are sent for review to experts - usually university professors (who often then oass it to their doctorate students) - with no payment to the reviewers.
  * The journal then prints the accepted papers and sells them to the very places that both supplies the work and the reviewers for free.
  Now there is a bunch of administration work the journal does, but we have computers these days, and universities already have a bunch of admin staff.
  The return the reviewers/submitters get is the prestige of being published in a respected journal and of being a reviewer/editor for a respected journal. The same thing would apply if the journals stopped being money siphoning devices.
  The main issue is certain journals are prestigious now and that takes time to change. If you have what you believe is a great piece of research now, where are you going to submit it? The prestigious journal that looks great on your list of publications and likely pulls in more grant money but that charges a fortune to libraries to buy it? Or that new relatively unknown journal that sells to libraries at cost (electronic copy free)?
  Hopefully the newer fields can get the ball rolling since they don't have as much of the existing prestige problem.
8. Re:Good, now... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 02:39 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well, I think the solution lies in cryptography (disclaimer: I am a grad student doing research in cryptography). You need a system where researchers in a field could apply digital signatures to papers, but with a twist: the reviewers should remain anonymous after applying those signatures. This is not an impossible task; it is called a "group signature." The idea is that universities/researchers would cooperate to bring peer reviewers together, and those reviewers would be given group signature keys that they would apply to the papers they review. A person reading a paper could verify the signatures, which would tell them which consortium of universities/researchers organized the review process for that paper.
  
  Like journals, the groups of reviewers could be organized on a per-month basis, and the names the whole group would be published -- with only a fraction actually reviewing any particular paper. It is not a complete break from journals as a system, it is just a way to use computers and the Internet to publish instead of relying on the old publishing companies; the way researchers communicate with each other has changed, and publishing articles should change too.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
9. Re:Good, now... by Anne_Nonymous · 2012-05-25 02:42 · Score: 1
  
  >> How else can I judge the validity of a paper, especially if I'm not in the field myself?
  Look for +5 Insightful
10. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 02:43 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  The problem is not reviewing, the problem is gaining sufficient reputation.
  You see, the internet replaces the distribution mechanism. It does not replace the reviewing process. So that we keep that as (as topic starter said) the way we already did it -- by academics, unpaid. Whether this is distributed electronically or on dead trees does not matter. The label that is on the distribution matters -- that is the seal of quality.
  To generate a new seal of quality, we'll have to start from square one: building reputation.
  After a steady flow of not publishing crap, reputation will be garnered. Even better, if some respected researchers use open access works as venues for their hot new stuff, then citation count will increase drastically, attention will be gained, and the whole process will be sped up.
  But yeah, this won't happen overnight. That's no need to start though -- even a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step and all.
11. Re:Good, now... by GreatBunzinni · 2012-05-25 02:45 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, but without journals, how will we per-judge the quality of others' work? This may sound facetious, but it's not. Any fool can write a journal article, and many fools can write compelling article. A journal offers getting and review by members in the field. How else can I judge the validity of a paper, especially if I'm not in the field myself?
  We are talking about science.
  You know, testable explanations and predictions about everything.
  You judge the validity of a paper by testing their explanations and predictions. That's essentially what the scientific community does for a living. Some person finds something odd, some other person comes up with an explanation, others test that explanation to see if its valid, and in the process might find other odd stuff. Rince and repeat.
  If you are worried that, without journals, you might not get a conforting authority dictating what you should and should not believe then rest assure, because organizations such as universities and research institutions are more than willing to put their logo on the cover of their member's papers, and also distribute them to the public.
  So, it's safe to say that the sky isn't falling.
  
  --
  Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
12. Re:Good, now... by gstoddart · 2012-05-25 02:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The Internet already made this point moot, friend.
  Yes, because we all know you can believe everything on the internet.
  Seriously, look at Wikipedia and loads of other things which get petty little squabbles about what is "true" and people spinning it to make their own point.
  Good, solid, reliable peer-reviewed stuff (and I mean qualified peers, not random people on the internet) is much harder to achieve than wikipedia.
  Think of how many "think tanks" put out position papers on behalf of whoever is paying for them -- much of that would utterly fail in a peer-reviewed context, but they get put out there to say "see, our opinion on science is just as valid as these guys". Joe Average has no idea this is just a tactic to muddy the waters -- it sounds awfully science-y to him.
  I think the internet has done the opposite of making peer-reviewed journals moot. Hell, we keep hearing how much of science is absolutely unbelievable as the authors fail to use any meaningful scientific rigor.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
13. Re:Good, now... by bzipitidoo · 2012-05-25 02:49 · Score: 2
  
  This is not a hard problem. The mere fact an article appears in a reputable journal is evidence it was properly peer reviewed. This can be replaced with digital signatures. An online journal could sign each approved article. Or if that's too hard, a journal can list on their own website (which itself is verified with a Domain Keys kind of scheme) all accepted papers and their digests, rather like most download site's md5sums.txt and sha1sums.txt files. Wouldn't even have to have the papers themselves, just the digests.
  Not that that matters a great deal. Shouldn't limit ourselves to traditional peer review to filter papers. With the improvements we have in communications, we'll see improvements in vetting processes. Meantime, in many ways better than peer review is number of citations. The more a paper is cited, the more significant it is thought to be. Already, that is pretty easy to check, as scholarly websites slowly accumulate papers and link them all together. Of course, have to be careful that measure of excellence is not gamed. You'd also want to consider who cited a paper. Wouldn't be hard to produce a bunch of trash just to pump up the number of citations on another piece of trash.
  
  --
  Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
14. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 02:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Want to guess who does the actual "peer reviewing"? You know... who judges the validity of published information and analysis...
  Hint: it's not publishers.
  It's the scientists themselves. And they do it without any type of monetary compensation (i.e. for free/gratis).
  Scientists do the work.
  (Other) scientists review the work.
  Publishers only do typesetting, rip-off scientists of their intellectual property right and little more than that.
  On the other hand... taxpayers ALREADY have to pay scientists to do research, already have to pay for scientists to spend their time doing peer-review, already have to give money to libraries so they can pay the publishers for their subscriptions (i.e. access to the research that was already funded by taxpayers to begin with). And... yeah... if they want to access that research that was bought and paid for them, guess what? THEY HAVE TO PAY YET AGAIN.
  Here's a crazy idea... take all the money that universities and libraries pay to publishers worldwide and use it to enable "open access initiatives" to have the required tools and expertise (mostly at the level of typesetting, since everything else is already covered by scientists anyway) for preparation and free dissemination of high-quality publications.
  Meanwhile... in the real world... current (i.e. already existing) open access journals are ALREADY some of the most reputed venues for scientific publication (e.g. "BMC Genomics"). So... yeah, no need to refute you when Reality already does it for me.
  Please... do tell... in what way does the "open access" model (as opposed to the "pay-wall" model of scientific publishing) prevent scientists from doing what they already are doing for free (i.e. peer-review)? I await your answer!
15. Re:Good, now... by FORTRANslinger · 2012-05-25 02:59 · Score: 1
  
  The Peter Principle: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle . I'd never heard of that principle under that name, but I've come across it often enough in academia and in "real work" places.
  
  --
  I'm looking over the wall; and the're looking at me!
16. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 03:05 · Score: 0
  
  Thank you. It's exactly this.
  It's stupid to assume a "pay-wall" automagically makes publications better or prevents fraud. There is _nothing_ that makes open access inherently less reputable than pay-wall scientific publishing.
  And the truth is... there are already plenty of "open access" journals that are highly reputable (PLoS journals, for instance... but you can find more at sciencecommons.org), so... it's not something hypothetical... it's not a question of "if", but of "when".
  Deal with it.
17. Re:Good, now... by jank1887 · 2012-05-25 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  mod parent up! I was just about to post about the problem of maintaining the anonymity of the peer review process while guaranteeing peer review. Science and Nature obviously have a different levels of rigor from the Journal of Your Mom's Basement. Your idea has merit.
18. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 03:19 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  ahh, I see. gone AC to avoid the bad karma...
  Here's your answer - open access is just one piece of the puzzle, and without a peer review certification process it is meaningless. If you're a senior academic and leader in your field, then your reputation precedes you and people will turn to your stuff regardless of peer review. But if you're a junior academic / post doc, perhaps your stuff is legit or perhaps it is crap and you're pushing it out the door to up your publication count. We need a certified peer review process for this.
  FYI, these open access internet journals, you typically have to pay money for the paper to get peer reviewed. I'm fine twith that. as long as there's a process!
19. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  The actual method (cryptography) isn't the issue. I'm sure it's easy to solve. The problem is having a transparent certified process for peer review. Where people say "ahh, they used the noh8rz3 method, so I can rely on it." This is the true value of the journal. It can be replaced by a company that facilitates peer review. But it will cost money up front.Get that piece of the puzzle, and open access is viable and won't destroy academia.
20. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  Meantime, in many ways better than peer review is number of citations. The more a paper is cited, the more significant it is thought to be.
  that's super, but...
  peer review is intended to vet the paper BEFORE it's published - you know, when it doesn't have any citations? Also, peer review isn't just a thumbs up / thumbs down. You get valuable feedback from leaders in your field, and can redo your paper and research so make it stronger. I don't have the link but search youtube for "hitler third reviewer" for a funny video on the topic.
21. Re:Good, now... by jank1887 · 2012-05-25 03:26 · Score: 1
  
  I can see it now. there will be a paper clearinghouse. it'll be like Digg for academics. Better start planning on exploiting the system now, I'm sure there's money to be made in this somewhere.
22. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 03:26 · Score: 0
  
  NO!!!! the whole point of peer review is to judge a paper BEFORE it is published. whatever. I'm sick of this thread. a bunch of egghead wannabees thinking they know what goes into academic work. I'm in academia, and I know how critical the peer review process and certification (call it thumbs up, or blessing) is. Go back to your IT job.
23. Re:Good, now... by NeutronCowboy · 2012-05-25 03:27 · Score: 0
  
  Have you ever heard of a search engine? It's this fancy tool that uses an algorithm to determine the most relevant webpage for your query. Somehow, I think there's space here to use that technology to build a search engine that will return you the most relevant article for your query. For example, beyond keywords, it could leverage highest number of citations, most blue-ribbon reviewers, best ratings, etc. You could even build reputation graphs for papers and reviewers.
  All of that is old hat. And, if it is really critical to brand papers, you could have researchers create review pools, where random members rate a paper, and where the only thing you know is that "Badass Astronomers from Hell" said a paper is good. Once you figure out that these people are generally spot on with their review, you'll trust them more, search more for their reviews, and suddenly, you have Nature reborn online, but without all the overhead that doesn't go to scientists.
  Oh, and someone should maintain a list of the sockpuppets. I'd hate to see them actually get modpoints.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
24. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 03:31 · Score: 1
  
  who's a sockpuppet? is that an accusation?
  here's a fact that blew my mind when my advisor told me - 90% of published articles are wrong. If this gets through the peer review process, how are you going to tell through your search bot which is best?
25. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 03:45 · Score: 0
  
  Open access and peer review are orthogonal issues. And peer review of open access archives is as possible as it ever was in a fancy, expensive journal. The only difference is that anybody can pull an article from an open access archive. If that person is some bright young kid and is inspired, great. If its some well educated research team member determined to test it, defeat it, or build on it.. have at it.
26. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 03:51 · Score: 0
  
  I don't know how to solve the "peer-review" problem, but locking the research up in journals for a large ransom doesn't seem like the right solution.
  I would imagine that once we have a critical mass of open university research, we might see solutions to that particular problem pop up. And UCSF being a trailblazer might just put them in a great position to direct the landscape of university research sharing.
27. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 03:55 · Score: 0
  
  no, the internet has made this question more relevant than ever. In a time of free and rapid dissemination of information, how can we judge the validity of that information. This is especially important if you're going to suggest supplanting a peer reviewed journal with open access. I await your answer!
  Easy, just add a facebook "like" and/or google "+1" button to every paper. The papers which receive the most votes must be the best...
28. Re:Good, now... by NeutronCowboy · 2012-05-25 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  If 90% of published articles are wrong, the current model is already failing. What you're absolutely missing, is that there is nothing in the journal model that can't be replicated online. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And since the heavy lifting - the writing of the paper and the review - is already done for free for the papers, it's trivial to put that process on the internet.
  Looks like your other accounts managed to get some modpoints. Nice going.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
29. Re:Good, now... by Sloppy · 2012-05-25 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  How do you, as a reader, judge whether a journal is real or not?
  Move that decision (however it is that you're implementing it) from the journal to the paper.
  Or not. What you mind find is you judge the validity of each journal using an amazingly weak and vulnerable algorithm. Solve that problem and you'll solve the paper problem.
  
  --
  As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
30. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 04:09 · Score: 0
  
  The problem is having a transparent certified process for peer review. Where people say "ahh, they used the noh8rz3 method, so I can rely on it." This is the true value of the journal.
  
  Actually, it is not. Most journals (at least in my field - medical image processing) want "new methods", and the peer review doesn't have access to the data or the implementation of the algorithm. All they do is test plausibility. Often it is even impossible to reimplement the method properly because parameters and "not so important" procedures are not properly described. And this happens in highly rated journals.
  The true test of a method should be that it has been re-done by a second team, but for just confirming an algorithm you usually don't get a paper, so nobody really does it, unless, maybe when you have a "better" new method to present that you can compare to the old one.
  I think the way PLoS does it is better then the current peer-review model: Everything that is technically sound gets accepted, and then the readers can comment and rate the article publicly.
31. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 04:25 · Score: 0
  
  I see you deduced that "noh8rz3" follows "noh8rz2" and "noh8rz". You're onto me, sherlock! Truth is, I create and use these accounts sequentially, because when I speak truth to power people mod me down into oblivion, essentially silencing any dissent. So by creating new accounts I'm doing my small part to keep slashdot a lively community. you're welcome.
32. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 04:28 · Score: 1
  
  this "amazingly weak algorithm" has worked for science for hundreds of years, and we've achieved our greatest accomplishments on the back of this "weak" system. In the meantime, we have "vibrant" communties like /. or digg where people waste their time saying inane things. QED.
33. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 04:29 · Score: 0
  
  Counting cites like:
  
  There are many conclusions [Bul1995] [Lsh2011] [It2012] in the past that have been incorrect because they did not consider the impact of the...
  for reputation purposes will give way too much credit to papers by the BulLshIt team of researchers.
34. Re:Good, now... by GreatBunzinni · 2012-05-25 04:49 · Score: 1
  
  NO!!!! the whole point of peer review is to judge a paper BEFORE it is published. whatever. I'm sick of this thread. a bunch of egghead wannabees thinking they know what goes into academic work. I'm in academia, and I know
  Considering what you've been posting, your claim, that you are in academia, is not believable.
  
  --
  Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
35. Re:Good, now... by uncqual · 2012-05-25 04:49 · Score: 3, Insightful
  Aren't there some important missing steps in that process for respected journals? Those steps being performed by technical editors who:
  
  * Review the flood of papers they receive.
  * Reject the vast majority of papers received.
  * Select appropriate reviewers for the remaining papers.
  * Coordinate updates among reviewers/authors.
  * Make a final publish/no publish decision.
  Although these steps don't (I think) justify the outrageous prices for many journal subscriptions, it's a lot of tedious work that requires technical expertise and I'm not sure one can find enough unpaid qualified gatekeepers to do it reliably and in sufficient volume consistently enough.
  These steps seem to be important to maintain the reputation of the journal by not passing too much unworthy BS to reviewers (thereby resulting in them withdrawing from the review pool) and by not rejecting too much really important work (that later gets published in a lesser journal raising its relative ranking and increasing fragmentation in the field and resulting in a lot of "fairly good" journals but no "great" journals in a field)
  --
  Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
36. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  Whatever. 4 conference papers, 3 journal articles. varying degrees of junk. but I gotta get published! It would be much easier if I could just post any crap online, because then I wouldn't have to jump through any hoops for rigor or accuracy.
37. Re:Good, now... by tlhIngan · 2012-05-25 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  no, the internet has made this question more relevant than ever. In a time of free and rapid dissemination of information, how can we judge the validity of that information. This is especially important if you're going to suggest supplanting a peer reviewed journal with open access. I await your answer!
  Same way it's always done. You do realize that any idiot with a computer and a web page can put up whatever they want, right? How do we judge the validity of information we find on the Internet?
  No reason we can't apply the same reasoning to online academic papers. The thing to remember is research is very rarely done in a vacuum - you draw on other's work and you want them to draw on yours.
  If you're just starting out your research, you're probably working under the eye of another or assisting someone else's research (which if done pright, gets your name in the final paper). Perhaps you come across something interesting - write it up and show others in the field who may be interested to comment on it. Peer review happens constantly - you're reading papers from your field, you're publishing papers others are reading. The only thing a journal does is formalize the process a bit.
38. Re:Good, now... by NeutronCowboy · 2012-05-25 05:57 · Score: 1
  
  Or, alternatively, it means you're a moron and your posts are a waste of screen space. Na, couldn't be. It's all a giant conspiracy to keep you from speaking the truth to power. What the hell is "power" in a Slashdot discussion anyway?
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
39. Re:Good, now... by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  It's a start. But peer review is rarely completely anonymous. First off, there may be only 10 or fewer people its logical to ask to review a highly specialized paper. In the consortia model, if "University of California" (10,000 professors?) signs a review, there's a good chance someone knowledgeable in their field could narrow it down to 2 or 3 professors before reading it, and know exactly who wrote it after reading it. Also, authors are often asked to suggest some of the reviewers, and are allowed to preclude personal enemies/competitors.
40. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 06:08 · Score: 0
  
  Although these steps don't (I think) justify the outrageous prices for many journal subscriptions, it's a lot of tedious work that requires technical expertise and I'm not sure one can find enough unpaid qualified gatekeepers to do it reliably and in sufficient volume consistently enough.
  The already existing open access journals, many with good reputations, are an existence proof that your concerns are minor if they exist at all.
41. Re:Good, now... by Obfuscant · 2012-05-25 06:09 · Score: 2
  
  Peer review happens constantly - you're reading papers from your field, you're publishing papers others are reading.
  
  That's not "peer review". Peer review means changes are made to correct errors prior to publication, or entire papers are withdrawn because they are bogus. It's not a "peer review" when someone arbitrary reads your paper. Google won't help you figure out if a paper is crap or not, it will only tell you that it contains a high percentage of the right keywords.
  And peer review doesn't mean the paper is sent to your friends to review, it is sent to people who sometimes are your harshest critics. If a paper can withstand that kind of review, then it probably has some merit. Reviews, in most cases, improve the paper by suggesting better methods of presenting data or more easily understood language. Peer Review is a Good Thing.
  Publishers don't just formalize the process a bit. They are the reason the process exists.
  Open access without peer review is a bad thing. Relying on "reputation" is a bad thing, since even the most highly regarded scientists can publish nonsense. (Just last week, one such highly regarded scientist was approached by a grad student who referred to an old paper of his, to which he said "that was crap, ignore it." Names witheld to protect the honest.)
  Open access will be to science what Pons and Flieschman's press conference was -- a way for more people to publish less correct work. Unless there is some mechanism added to enforce peer review, and that doesn't look likely. The scientific literature will become like wikipedia -- often wrong but ubiquitously referred to.
  By the way, Oregon State did this in 2009.
42. Re:Good, now... by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:10 · Score: 1
  
  I think the way PLoS does it is better then the current peer-review model: Everything that is technically sound gets accepted, and then the readers can comment and rate the article publicly.
  One place where traditional peer review can excel above PLoS is that it is an editing process. Peers have the chance to suggest additional experiments and explanations, catch errors, improve clarity, and genuinely improve the paper before the rest of the world sees it. Of course that benefit is balanced by peers who just say "you need to cite (my totally irrelevant) article before you publish", etc.
43. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 06:13 · Score: 0
  
  Different fields will vary - math for instance takes the stance that they will not verify the code, but that aside, the referees do closely scrutinize the proofs of the claimed results. Plausible is not an acceptable standard in our world. There is also something to be said for categorizing results - those that will be interesting to fellow mathematicians belong in a different journal (or journal analog) than those that may only be of interest to those working in Analysis or to those working in Algebra. Some results may only be meaningful (at this point) to those working on Lie Algebras rather than Algebra broadly defined. Often times these specialized areas eventually return results of value to the central subject, but until that point, it is not worth being brought to the attention of the broader community.
44. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 06:13 · Score: 0
  
  * Review the flood of papers they receive. * Reject the vast majority of papers received.
  Okay, that sounds non-trivial. I guess have some grad students be first-round reviewers to eliminate the papers that are definitely worthless, maybe?
  
  * Select appropriate reviewers for the remaining papers.
  This is done by a computer program (or, at least, easily could be).
  
  * Coordinate updates among reviewers/authors.
  Also done by a computer program.
  
  * Make a final publish/no publish decision.
  
  I'm pretty sure the program committee which actually makes that decision is just made up of the reviewers and is also unpaid.
45. Re:Good, now... by Obfuscant · 2012-05-25 06:16 · Score: 1
  
  Peer review is often unpaid under the current system
  Peer review is often paid in a quid-pro-quo manner. I.e., if you publish you are expected to review in return.
  If every scientist can publish without having peer reviews, why would they volunteer to peer review other people's work? It's not a fun job.
  
  You do not need a journal to organize peer review when researchers can communicate with each other rapidly on the Internet
  The ability of folks to communicate quickly amongst their own group has nothing to do with peer review and does nothing to reduce the need for it. One scientist publishing a paper cannot be expected to deal with potentially thousands of other scientists in his field sending him questions or comments about a paper he's already published. You can't unring the bell. You can't unpublish a bogus paper. Peer review can keep the bell from being rung initially.
46. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  You're right! What we need is some entity that accepts papers, matches them up with peer reviewers, provides editors, provides a known location to find papers... oh right, that's what journals do now. I don't know anyone who actually uses paper journals, and I don't think the library at my (major) university buys most journals in physical format anymore. I also don't think PLOS even prints a dead tree version. That doesn't mean "journals" aren't necessary.
47. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 06:31 · Score: 1
  
  You call that addressed?
  Journals certify the peer review. They pick the reviewers, keep track of who's a crappy reviewer, etc. The journal is motivated to make sure things stay legit because their reputation is on the line, and that's really all they have. If you don't have someone overseeing things you get... the YouTube comment section. Or Slashdot.
48. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  You're just replacing journals with universities. And universities a) don't want to run journals, b) can't run anything else effectively anyway, c) have a built in conflict of interest and d) journals accept papers from people who aren't affiliated with universities.
49. Re:Good, now... by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  it's a lot of tedious work that requires technical expertise and I'm not sure one can find enough unpaid qualified gatekeepers to do it reliably and in sufficient volume consistently enough.
  What I think would work well is the law school journal model, which is essentially student run but still high quality due to the extreme reputation enhancement you get from being part of the process. Have groups of graduate students and postdocs (all in the same field, but not necessarily all in the same school) be responsible for most of the editing functions; they get paid in reputation (what you need most while training) and maybe travel costs for journal-specific meetings. Students would also end up with a lot of valuable insight into how the academic game is actually played and the political skills they will need. Riding herd you would still have big name professors on the masthead to add clout and cajole procrastinators, and you could farm out the IT and paper publishing to the university press.
50. Re:Good, now... by Darinbob · 2012-05-25 06:34 · Score: 1
  
  What does this policy actually do? Faculty were not forbidden to use open access repositories in the past and under the new policy they're not required to use them either. Is this just a nudge?
51. Re:Good, now... by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:35 · Score: 1
  
  NO!!!! the whole point of peer review is to judge a paper BEFORE it is published.
  
  Very true. As you pointed out, most of the value added by peer review happens before publication.
52. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  The existing open access journals have technical reviewers, do all of the things he listed, and charge hefty fees for publication to pay for it all. So they prove something, all right, but not what you think they do.
53. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 06:38 · Score: 0
  
  "power" is the legion of mindless goog fanbois who drool all over themsleves at the mention of goog or android. "truth" is holding up a mirror at the claim "don't be evil."
54. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  Clearly you don't know much about scientific publishing.
  Coordinating reviewers and authors is non-trivial. The journals all have computer systems that try to do it, and more often than not something doesn't work right and the actual live editor has to step in.
  The (paid) editor makes the publish/no publish decision. Not the reviewers. Not whatever a "program committee" is. The reviewers make (frequently contradictory) recommendations. The editor looks at what the reviewers said, what the authors said, and makes a decision based on that. Quite often you have an idiot reviewer who would sink the publication of a paper if not for an editor who recognizes the reviewer is an idiot.
55. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 06:40 · Score: 1
  
  wow, AC nailed it. +1.
56. Re:Good, now... by NeutronCowboy · 2012-05-25 06:41 · Score: 1
  
  Hi Bonch. Your OCD is showing again.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
57. Re:Good, now... by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:46 · Score: 1
  
  How do you, as a reader, judge whether a journal is real or not?
  Move that decision (however it is that you're implementing it) from the journal to the paper.
  Most readers aren't in a vacuum. The average reader (been active in the field for 5-40 years) of the average journal article probably already has a relationship with the principal author: they've known each other for years, hired each other's undergrads and grad students as grad students and postdocs, spoken to each other at conferences and seen each others' presentations. At the very least they've probably already read several articles by the author and maybe reviewed one of them. Journal articles and conference proceedings are the permanent record of academic science, but it's only a small part of the communication.
58. Re:Good, now... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 07:01 · Score: 1
  
  In the consortia model, if "University of California" (10,000 professors?) signs a review, there's a good chance someone knowledgeable in their field could narrow it down to 2 or 3 professors before reading it, and know exactly who wrote it after reading it.
  Sure, but this is not something that will be true regardless of what system you use to manage peer review. My only point is that we can and should take publishing companies out of the loop -- they serve no purpose that cannot be served better / at lower cost using the Internet. The only requirement is that we do not weaken the security that publishing companies provide as a service right now -- in technical terms, I should be able to simulate a publishing company facilitating the peer review process, and such a simulation should not be distinguishable from a publishing company actually facilitating the process.
  
  Also, authors are often asked to suggest some of the reviewers, and are allowed to preclude personal enemies/competitors.
  The authors should not, however, know which, if any, of the suggested reviewers were actually selected.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
59. Re:Good, now... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  I think points (a) and (b) cannot really be solved by any technical means; if universities are not interested in facilitating peer review or editing and would rather just continue to pay publishing companies to do so, then even a perfect technical solution is irrelevant.
  
  That being said, point (c) can be addressed by having many institutions collaborate on managing journals. I do not think that this is inherently problematic, and if the process is completely transparent then conflicts of interest could be immediately pointed out. It is not perfect, but neither is the current system; I think getting rid of publishing companies would ultimately be beneficial, and that it would not be too hard to mitigate/manage the problems of universities running the peer review process.
  
  As for accepting papers from people who are not affiliated, I am not understanding your point -- are you claiming that if universities were running the peer review process, unaffiliated researchers would be unable to publish their work? If the submissions were anonymous to begin with, how would that even work? I envision a system where papers are submitted through some sort of a mix network, reviewed and given a group signature, and then published. The author names in the paper could be (cryptographically) committed, then opened once the authors are notified of their paper passing peer review (i.e. when the authors receive the signature, they open their commitment; the final paper would be the submitted paper, the signature, and the key to open the authors' names and contact information). We have the technology to do all of the above right now; it is really a matter of addressing your first two points, which I will admit may be fatal to this idea.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
60. Re:Good, now... by Obfuscant · 2012-05-25 07:26 · Score: 1
  
  You judge the validity of a paper by testing their explanations and predictions. That's essentially what the scientific community does for a living.
  Right. I want to judge the validity of a paper on the Higgs boson, so I rent time on the SSC to reproduce the experiment. Everyone else who wants to judge does the same thing. Seems like a good use of limited resources. Can you find me a funding agency that will pay for this?
  Peer review puts this work in the hands of a few people who are allegedly experts in the field, and their job is to judge the validity of the paper, not necessarily the results of the experiment that it may be reporting on. Was the scientific process followed? Were there controls where necessary? Does the data support the conclusion, whatever it may be? Is the data presented in a logical and reasonable manner? Are the assumptions underlying the paper reasonable? Is there some glaring error of omission or execution? Is the material itself publishable? Is it fresh and new, or simply reworked decades old textbook material? Are there proper citations for previous work, or previous work that should have been cited but was not?
  You forget, the readers may not be experts in the field. They may be expanding their horizons or looking for new research questions, and expecting every one of them to "test the explanations and predictions" for themselves is silly. Expecting them to know that Smith and Wesson in 1975 did a similar experiment and came up with similar results but a different conclusion, and that the paper they are reading is incomplete because it did not discuss that experiment, is outrageous.
  
  ... because organizations such as universities and research institutions are more than willing to put their logo on the cover of their member's papers,
  
  And this serves the function of peer review and validation how, precisely?
61. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 07:41 · Score: 1
  
  Why do you keep talking about cryptography? There isn't really a problem verifying that someone is who they say they are. The problem is that somebody has to do the organizational work, and no, your computer won't replace a good editor. That editor can be paid by a journal company, or by a university. It doesn't really matter, but there are some advantages to having some arm's length organizations, not the least being that most universities are already huge, bloated and inefficient.
  "Publishing" companies will either change or die because their primary function, publishing and distributing paper journals, has disappeared. But similar organizations are still needed to do all the things that journal publishers do now OTHER than printing and distributing paper journals. Moving the whole thing under the auspices of universities won't change anything, and neither will some cryptographic signatures.
  Incidentally, using open access journals is going to have to lead to some serious cuts to library funding and fees universities skim off grants for services. Which leaves control of the money in the researchers' hands, which I think is a good thing, but the librarians and university administrators probably won't like it.
62. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  ahh, I see. gone AC to avoid the bad karma...
  Ad hominem. Love it. I don't have a Slashdot account, therefore my statements are invalid, is it?
  
  Here's your answer - open access is just one piece of the puzzle, and without a peer review certification process it is meaningless.
  Uh... do "paywalled" scientific publishers pass any specific "peer review certification process"? If yes, what makes you assume a "open access" publication wouldn't? Back up your assertions or simply continue to illustrate your ignorance about the subject: your choice.
  
  If you're a senior academic and leader in your field, then your reputation precedes you and people will turn to your stuff regardless of peer review. But if you're a junior academic / post doc, perhaps your stuff is legit or perhaps it is crap and you're pushing it out the door to up your publication count. We need a certified peer review process for this.
  Uh... we already have a process of peer review and of building up reputation (a web-of-trust, if you want) and (surprisingly) YES, open access journals impose the same (if not higher) criteria for publication. This is obvious: regardless of whether you're a "paywalled" publisher or an "open access" publisher, it's in your best interest not to publish "crap", because "crap" doesn't get cited and lowers your citation indexes and stats.
  
  FYI, these open access internet journals, you typically have to pay money for the paper to get peer reviewed. I'm fine twith that. as long as there's a process!
  Don't need to FYI me, because I HAVE published in both "paywalled" and "open access" journals, so I KNOW you have to pay money to publish papers in some open access journals because I HAVE PAID. I, the content creator, paid money to get a published paper outside a paywall: and I'm ok with that.
  Again, you failed to show in what way does "open access" undermine the peer review process.
  Please re-read what you wrote:
  
  In a time of free and rapid dissemination of information, how can we judge the validity of that information. This is especially important if you're going to suggest supplanting a peer reviewed journal with open access.
  You're funny: you think "open access" doesn't involve peer review, for some strange reason. Besides... who mentioned "supplanting" anything? There's no reason why "paywalled" and "open access" can't co-exist. In fact, THEY ALREADY DO.
  How can we judge the validity of that information? I don't know... maybe using THE SAME PROCESS WE'VE BEEN USING?! (did you even read what I wrote?). Go on "wikipedia" and read a bit on "open access". I think it would prevent you from making ignorant assertions.
  Keep arguing with the silly AC, but you are the one who still failed to show how going from "paywall" mode to "open access" mode and/or the existence of the Internet somehow compromises the peer review process.
  Hint: It doesn't.
  (I await your answer!)
63. Re:Good, now... by Twinbee · 2012-05-25 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  I've already answered something similar to this question before. A pagerank type mechanism for people (perhaps multidimensional to cater to the specific skill set of the ranker) can be used. Votes can be out of a hundred, and are weighted according to the authority of the person doing the ranking.
  
  The devil's in the details, but that's the basic idea.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
64. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 08:13 · Score: 0
  
  Sorry for the trollish response. Anyway... UCSF wants to start making their own publications... sure, it's all good.
  Why?
  Because they will float or sink according to how stringent they want to be. If they publish "crap" that isn't relevant, it's not going to be cited by anyone relevant. It works a bit like the PageRank algorithm: papers need cite juice to be relevant (making their authors relevant). Publications that publish relevant papers (high citation, from relevant publishers) tend to float to the top. So if UCSF is strict with what they publish, they'll be considered a good venue for publishing and relevant, otherwise, they won't.
  It's as simple as that.
  They want to make more research available to the public for free?! That's GOOD(tm). Trust me, there are no downsides here: if it's crap, it's irrelevant; if it's good, it's very good for the taxpayer.
65. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  you can crowdsource a lot of thigns, but you can't crowdsource expert opinion. "4 out of 5 dentists agree, white strips are good for your teeth!" To put it another way, do you get your medial advice off of webmd, or do you go see a doctor? nuff said. no need to reply, there's not really anything more to say.
66. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 08:28 · Score: 1
  
  also, you're showing your ignorance about peer reivew. it's not just a rating after a paper is complete, like rotten tomatoes. it's feedback before teh paper was finalized. 1) the reviewers provide advice on how to make a paper stronger. 2) the reviewers reject bad papers, ensuring that they don't see the light of day. crowdsource that!
67. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 08:32 · Score: 0
  
  harsh! btw microsoft rulez!!!!!
68. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 08:34 · Score: 1
  
  thanks for saying things more convincingly than I could. you should have inserted it into the top of the thread, so you got +5!
69. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 08:37 · Score: 0
  
  Fortunately toll access publishers have a stringent peer review process which gave us such gems as "Chaos Solitons and Fractals" and "Australasian J. of Bone and joint medicine".
70. Re:Good, now... by Twinbee · 2012-05-25 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  I was talking from a perspective about papers getting looked at in the first place. And how much 'authority' should be given to a particular citation, or even if it's not worth citing at all. That kind of thing.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
71. Re:Good, now... by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  That editor can be paid by a journal company
  ...or not paid at all, which is not uncommon.
  
  But similar organizations are still needed to do all the things that journal publishers do now OTHER than printing and distributing paper journals
  Really, the only thing that needs to be done is to select the reviewers and editors; this is not something that requires some huge bureaucracy, nor does it require a publishing company. Everything else can be done over the Internet.
  
  using open access journals is going to have to lead to some serious cuts to library funding and fees universities skim off grants for services.
  We can dream, but my guess is that universities will still take as much grant money as they can. They can always claim that we get to sit at their desks, and must therefore give them a boatload of money for that privilege...
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
72. Re:Good, now... by GreatBunzinni · 2012-05-25 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  Right. I want to judge the validity of a paper on the Higgs boson, so I rent time on the SSC to reproduce the experiment. Everyone else who wants to judge does the same thing. Seems like a good use of limited resources. Can you find me a funding agency that will pay for this?
  Boy, aren't we exaggerating.
  Before thinking about purchasing a particle accelerator, you have a considerable number of things which you can and must actually do by yourself in order to test the paper's validity. One of those things is actually reading the paper, understanding the theoretical hypothesis which were laid out, analyse the data which was used as a basis for the results presented in the paper, check if it holds out, evaluate the results... You know, the peer review process.
  In this context, the need for a particle accelerator only enters the equation if you suspect that the results presented in the paper aren't up to par, and you wish to replicate them to see if you aren't being duped. Even in that case, you still need to run the series of tests which I pointed out.
  So, if you actually intend to judge the validity of a paper on the Higgs boson then it's safe to say that purchasing a particle accelerator is the least of your concerns. In fact, how many of those actually involved in reviewing that sort of papers have access to their own personal particle accelerator? And does that stop them from doing it? Precisely.
  
  Peer review puts this work in the hands of a few people who are allegedly experts in the field, and their job is to judge the validity of the paper, not necessarily the results of the experiment that it may be reporting on. Was the scientific process followed? Were there controls where necessary? Does the data support the conclusion, whatever it may be? Is the data presented in a logical and reasonable manner? Are the assumptions underlying the paper reasonable? Is there some glaring error of omission or execution? Is the material itself publishable? Is it fresh and new, or simply reworked decades old textbook material? Are there proper citations for previous work, or previous work that should have been cited but was not?
  Notice that you actually don't need access to a particle accelerator to do any of those things. You actually only need to have an academic interest in the subject. If you are interested in scientific problems such as the validity of the Higgs boson and you are curious enough to be willing to spend your time rummaging through articles on the Higgs boson then odds are to actually know something about it, and you are actually in a position to judge by yourself at least a portion of those details.
  So, unless you intend to avoid having to think about the stuff and instead you want an authority to tell you what you must believe in, whether a paper is published in a journal or is distributed directly from the site of a university or research institution is actually irrelevant, because you are quite able and willing to turn on your brain and actually do science.
  
  You forget, the readers may not be experts in the field. They may be expanding their horizons or looking for new research questions, and expecting every one of them to "test the explanations and predictions" for themselves is silly. Expecting them to know that Smith and Wesson in 1975 did a similar experiment and came up with similar results but a different conclusion, and that the paper they are reading is incomplete because it did not discuss that experiment, is outrageous.
  You aren't required to be an expert in the field. If you are interested enough on a given field to actually read the papers then you are certainly already knowledgeable about the subject. Moreover, you certainly are already aware that a paper is supposed to be food for thought, not a textbook.
  
  ... because organizations such as universities and research institutions are more than willing to pu
  
  --
  Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
73. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 08:54 · Score: 0
  
  Editors are most of the time unpaid volunteers.
74. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 09:00 · Score: 0
  
  Reviewers are unpaid volunteers.
75. Re:Good, now... by bzipitidoo · 2012-05-25 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  peer review is intended to vet the paper BEFORE it's published
  Why is that so important? You wait for a formal review if you want. I want to see new work right away. Publish and go! Yes I might waste time on garbage, but the lengthy delay of a review is more costly. If a work is crap, it won't hold up long. Besides, I've seen plenty of crap that was peer reviewed.
  Some researchers want their work reviewed, but most do not. I've seen people practically write papers on the back of reviewers' efforts, which seems to me to be a bit unfair. The reviewers point out all kinds of mistakes and omissions, and with practically no alteration, the researcher cuts and pastes the reviewers' work into the paper. The reviewers get no credit of course-- difficult to give credit when the reviewers are supposed to remain anonymous.
  
  --
  Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
76. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 09:09 · Score: 0
  
  You mean like Elsevier certified the peer review in "Chaos Solitons and Fractals" was genuine.
77. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 09:29 · Score: 0
  
  Peer review is done by academics that volunteer their time. Editors are also academics that volunteer their time. Commercial publishers doesn't provide peer review, academia does.
78. Re:Good, now... by olau · 2012-05-25 10:22 · Score: 1
  
  Quite often you have an idiot reviewer who would sink the publication of a paper if not for an editor who recognizes the reviewer is an idiot.
  One way to fix that is doing it in the open so people can learn who's usually a moron and who's not.
  Or perhaps just let more people read the articles and vote on whether they found them useful or not. The whole small-committee-decides-the-fate idea makes less sense on the interwebs than it did in the old world.
79. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 10:25 · Score: 0
  
  Not true, there are open access journals that charge no fees.
80. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 11:10 · Score: 1
  
  so, a paper's worth would be determined by the number and quality of papers it cites? Then I'll have an easy time writing grade A papers!
81. Re:Good, now... by Obfuscant · 2012-05-25 11:32 · Score: 1
  
  Before thinking about purchasing a particle accelerator,
  Boy, aren't we exxagerating? Who said purchase?
  
  One of those things is actually reading the paper, understanding the theoretical hypothesis which were laid out, analyse the data which was used as a basis for the results presented in the paper, check if it holds out, evaluate the results... You know, the peer review process.
  That is not the peer review process. It is also a rare paper that provides all the raw data so someone can analyze it himself. Nobody does that, because nobody wants to give away the data they'll use for the next PhD or paper.
  
  In this context, the need for a particle accelerator only enters the equation if you suspect that the results presented in the paper aren't up to par, and you wish to replicate them to see if you aren't being duped.
  You are wrong. The scientific method does not say that one replicates an experiment only if one thinks he's being duped, it says you replicate the experiment to show that you get the same results when the experiment is done by someone else. And the "scientific method" is exactly what the OP was claiming was "the peer review method", so "in this context", you'd need to rent time on (not purchase) an SSC if you wanted to "peer review" a paper on the Higgs boson, according to the OP.
  
  You actually only need to have an academic interest in the subject.
  Untrue. You also need a good background in the subject to know when things are missing, or when other people's work is being presented incorrectly. An academic interest is why you are reading the paper, and you are reading the paper because you want to learn something, not because you already know it all. Yeah, some arrogant people do read papers in subjects where they do know it all just so they can corner the author at the next conference and point out all his mistakes in public. Most people read papers to learn because they don't know everything there is to know.
  
  If all a person wants in journals is that they serve as an authoritative seal of approval which gives him enough confidence to place blind faith on a paper then the logo of a big name institution actually does the same thing.
  Exxagerating again, are we? Peer review doesn't give "blind faith" in anything. It's a reasoned expectation that someone who is knowledgable in the subject has looked the paper over and doesn't find any glaring or obvious whoppers. The logo of a University gives no such reasoned expectation. That's the true "blind faith" option.
  
  The fact of the matter is this: if someone actually reads papers of a given field and actually cares about how the peer review process works in that field then that person is already quite able to digest that information.
  That is your opinion, not a fact. I've read many many papers in fields that are tangential to my research, and I care about how the peer review process works, and I am much better off because those papers did go through that process than if they had not. The question is not if the reader is able to digest the information, but that the information bears some semblance to truth and reason. Digesting incorrect information is worse than not being able to digest it at all, and the ability to digest it has nothing at all to do with peer review or the lack thereof.
82. Re:Good, now... by Twinbee · 2012-05-25 11:51 · Score: 1
  
  More like the other way around. A citation would help the citated paper. I think that's similar to what Google does with their Google Scholar search.
  
  Also it would help the person who's writing the paper decide whether a citation is worth using (or whether it might undermine their paper).
  
  And yes, I'm sure there's room for abuse if it's not thought out well enough.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
83. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 14:18 · Score: 1
  
  yes but... how are you going to rank a new paper? You know, one that hasn't been cited yet? hmm? I await your response.
84. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 15:02 · Score: 0
  
  While this is a good point, a big problem with science these days is that competitive pressures are causing many to cut corners, a peer review just doesn't catch this. It isn't enough review.
  So we have the phenomenon, recently reported in Nature, where 3/4 of reports published in high profile journals in at least one field cannot be replicated. That number is not a mistake -- 3/4 of what is published in these high impact factor journals can't be reproduced and is probably wrong. And many of these journals are proprietary closed access journals.
85. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 15:15 · Score: 0
  
  I think many of the editors just rely on the opinions of people they know in the field or the reputation of the authors in deciding what to send out for review. New ideas have a very hard time getting published in this model.
  Lynn Margulis's seminal paper on endosymbiosis was rejected 17 times before being published, so peer-review as we know it is far from optimal.
  Closed access will die though, because with the internet scientists just don't need publisher's printing presses anymore - that's the bottom line. Publishers are middlemen who will be dis-intermediated like so many others before them.
86. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 15:53 · Score: 1
  
  "Really, the only thing that needs to be done is to select the reviewers and editors;"
  And maintain archives, and run the web site making everything available, and provide the reputation, etc. It doesn't require a huge bureaucracy, but it does require some organization, as the existing open source journals demonstrate.
  You can wave your hands all you want, but EVERYTHING requires someone to organize things. Usually more somebodies than you'd think.
87. Re:Good, now... by ceoyoyo · 2012-05-25 15:59 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, I think reviews should be done in the open. But it still doesn't eliminate the need for a professional arbiter. Morons will always be morons.
  "Or perhaps just let more people read the articles and vote on whether they found them useful or not."
  Yes, that works just wonderfully. Slashdot comments. YouTube comments. Etc.
88. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 21:17 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, and 90% of statistics are just made up on the spot.
  Anyway, even if we take the number your advisor obtained from his anal orifice, it doesn't matter.
  A paper in Science/Nature (or a paper that gets cited by a scientist that publishes in Science/Nature) is not the same as a paper in the Obscure Journal of Cognitive Diarrhea of Somalia (or a paper that gets cited by scientists that publish in such "high-quality" journals).
  Also, if you cite a paper from Obscure Journal of Cognitive Diarrhea of Somalia on some important fact, in one of your papers, it better be relevant, or it might raise some questions.
  That's like saying "my grandma told me - 90% of the Internet is spam, malware, terrorists and penis enlargement pills". It might be true, but it's irrelevant - we ALREADY have something to filter the crap from the relevant works: first and foremost, there's a reputation system among publishers and scientists that, like Google on the Internet, easily filters out most of the crap; and then, obviously, there's this thing called "brain". Very often, you just have to read a paper to understand how good the work is.
  "90% of published articles are wrong. If this gets through the peer review process, how are you going to tell through your search bot which is best?"
  Geee.... I don't know... 90% of the Internet is almost irrelevant spam and crap. If it gets published, how does Google find out which is best? You might want to look up things like "graph theory" and "PageRank" or wikipedia.
  Trust me, you know nothing of the peer review process. You assume that, because some journalist or some less-scrupulous scientist want to make horrible extrapolations and/or horrible science, and end up publishing laughable non-science on some irrelevant (from the scientific point of view) publication, that somehow the peer review process has been undermined.
  Put this through your brain: for the process of reputation building, it's not enough to just publish. You have to publish in credible venues (paywall or not). A scientist that only publishes questionable things in questionable (or unknown/irrelevant) venues will never have the same reputation than a person that publishes a single highly-cited Science paper (with these citations coming from decent scientists/venues themselves).
  Again, if you're not a sockpuppet, you're very ignorant. Try to back your statements with something better than "oh, my advisor said something clearly pulled out of his ass".
89. Re:Good, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 22:49 · Score: 0
  
  Aren't there some important missing steps in that process for respected journals? Those steps being performed by technical editors who:
  The editors of prestigious journals (paid or unpaid, paywall or open access) are (surprisingly) usually scientists and reputed professors.
  
  * * Review the flood of papers they receive.
  * * Reject the vast majority of papers received.
  Can be done by university admins and grad students, if you get so much stuff below your threshold of "decency"; probably for less money than Elsevier charges.
  
  * * Select appropriate reviewers for the remaining papers.
  * * Coordinate updates among reviewers/authors.
  * * Make a final publish/no publish decision.
  
  This is already done mostly by (often unpaid) scientists and scientific editors.
  
  [...] it's a lot of tedious work that requires technical expertise and I'm not sure one can find enough unpaid qualified gatekeepers to do it reliably and in sufficient volume consistently enough.
  
  Well.. the "tedious" part of it (the "technical" side, if you want) is currently done by publishers and, like parent said, those can be often be somewhat replaced by the "publishing dept." of a University. Typesetting, reviewing manuscripts for formatting guidelines, etc.
  All the scientific parts of it, on the other hand (you know... the "peer review" part) is _already_ done by scientists (and overwhelmingly _unpaid_ scientists). If your publication is so high reputation (think Science or Nature) that you need scientific editors (i.e. scientists) working with you full-time, you might have to pay them, sure, but... believe me... the overhead costs would be so low compared to the current situation, that they could easily just charge authors to publish (which would end up being paid using grant money) and STILL end up being a less waste of taxpayers money, while giving taxpayers more access to the research THEY PAY FOR.
  Besides, most of the "hard" or "tedious" work is already done with automated tools and "paper submission frameworks" that, to be honest, generally suck balls. It's not uncommon at all to receive mostly automated and "canned answer"-type of emails during a "modern" paper submission process. As soon as expertise is required in assessing whether a paper is crap or not, a (often unpaid) scientists is always required. And this is already true today, both in "paywall" and "open access" publications.
  TL;DR: You're overestimating the role that "publishers" (as opposed to "unpaid scientists") have in the peer review process.
90. Re:Good, now... by Twinbee · 2012-05-26 00:50 · Score: 1
  
  You could have an 'Author' rank as well, and that could either be a separate rank, or maybe it could contribute to the paper too. The details could be messy. Otherwise, yeah, the new paper would have to wait until it garnered some citations. Is waiting such a bad thing? (All this can be in addition to peer review of course).
  
  In any case, that's the system Google employs for their ranking technique.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
91. Re:Good, now... by bdabautcb · 2012-05-26 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  While I do agree with you, and I think that type of high level vetting is important for certain uses, most journal articles really do not need it. I am a ecologist and do research, and when I run into problems with theories I am incorporating into experimental design I find that my colleagues and even sometimes undergraduates are far more useful to go to than the editorial staff of any of the major journals. The internet has evolved into an unbelievably fast and easy tool for creating, disseminating, and locating information, but I fear that it has also contributed to the decline of the basis of a university; that is, working with other people to create your own interpretation of information and arriving on a consensus of what is correct enough to be used in further research. Personal responsibility has gone by the wayside, if you make a mistake based of false information, then I think it is your (or my, when I do it) fault for not fully understanding or properly inspecting that information.
  
  --
  Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
92. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-26 05:13 · Score: 1
  
  yes, it's obviously a bad thing. i'm an academic and I want to know what the new research is! I don't care what the agglomerated opinion is of 10 year old research. I need a tool to be able to evaluate new research. I await your answer!
93. Re:Good, now... by Twinbee · 2012-05-26 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  You'd have to rely then on the author's existing reputation. Or maybe have other scientists rank the paper who themselves have varying degrees of reputation based on their existing papers (or from votes directly).
  
  I think the conversation has drifted a bit since we started...
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
94. Re:Good, now... by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-26 17:05 · Score: 1
  
  so you're saying... you've found a convoluted system that may result in a system equivalent to what we currently have? that's progress! you should run for president!
Copyrights? by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 02:06 · Score: 0

Typically, when you submit to a journal you give them the copyright for publishing your work, and can't publish it elsewhere. Is ucsf saying that they won't publish their articles in any more journals? ThT seems like. Step bCkwRds.
1. Re:Copyrights? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful
  Not necessarily a step backwards; it could be a step towards ending the anachronism that is journal publishing. Really, what are journals doing for us these days, that cannot be done online?
  
  Researchers can be organized over the Internet to participate in peer review; this is already done voluntarily in many cases under the current system.
  Editing can be coordinated online as well, and is likewise often done by unpaid volunteers.
  Papers can be distributed to researchers over the Internet instead of being bound and printed.
  So really, the only thing that journals have left at this point is their names -- a paper in a "top journal" looks good on a CV, regardless of whether or not the paper is really groundbreaking. Is that really something that justifies the continued existence of journals? I think not...
  --
  Palm trees and 8
2. Re:Copyrights? by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 02:25 · Score: 2
  
  1) academia operates on reputation, so a paper in a more rigorous journal does and should carry more weight. This is a good thing because it helps separate good work from the junk. 2) You say things like "papers can be..." but I'm saying that online access is worthless unless there is a certified transparent peer review process. I await your suggestions...
3. Re:Copyrights? by pauljlucas · 2012-05-25 02:30 · Score: 2
  
  [W]hat are journals doing for us these days, [sic] that cannot be done online?
  
  A paper cited in a journal will be there indefinitely. One can always get a hold of the original paper even for papers written decades ago. Can you guarantee that the URL for a paper that is available only online will still work in 10 years? How about 50?
  
  --
  If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
4. Re:Copyrights? by codeAlDente · 2012-05-25 02:39 · Score: 1
  
  The current peer review process is not perfect, but as you mention, it provides several benefits: researchers can be organized, and because of independent journal publishing, the people who select the peer reviewer are different from the people with a personal financial stake in the grant-funding process. Same with editing - the editor must referee between the authors and the reviewers, and if they're scientific colleagues, that easily leads to conflicts of interest. pauljlucas just covered the distribution issue.
  
  --
  He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
5. Re:Copyrights? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 02:40 · Score: 1
  
  That is what DOI is for, and there is no reason that big research institutions could not store archives of published work -- which they already do by maintaining bookshelf upon bookshelf of bound journals.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
6. Re:Copyrights? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 02:51 · Score: 2
  
  academia operates on reputation, so a paper in a more rigorous journal does and should carry more weight. This is a good thing because it helps separate good work from the junk
  Except that I have seen good work published in less "rigorous" journals (well, in CS it is more conferences than journals, but the effect is the same: I have seen good work presented at lower-tier conferences, and I have even seen people cite groundbreaking papers and get published in top-tier conferences for incremental improvements, when the groundbreaking paper itself was rejected from the top tier conferences). The name of the journal that a paper is published in is only loosely related to the quality of the paper. Articles should be judged on the quality of the work, and reputations should be built by publishing quality results, not by publishing in particular journals.
  
  You say things like "papers can be..." but I'm saying that online access is worthless unless there is a certified transparent peer review process. I await your suggestions...
  Well, we are having this conversation in two different threads, so I'll just reiterate this point: we can use group signatures to facilitate peer review. Researchers / institutions can coordinate to bring together a couple dozen reviewers, and then some random subset can review a particular paper; if the paper passes review, that subset applies a group signature for the group of reviewers and concatenates it to the paper, which is then published, or else sends anonymous feedback to the authors of the paper (which is what happens in the current system). When someone reads a paper, they can see that some subset of the group of reviewers agreed that the paper should pass the review process, but learns nothing about that subset. The only thing that needs to be done is for the researchers to be organized, but that is something that can be done cooperatively and which does not require a publishing company to facilitate.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
7. Re:Copyrights? by codeAlDente · 2012-05-25 02:57 · Score: 1
  
  In my experience the big research institutions are getting rid of the old bound journals, and won't take any more, even from well-maintained private faculty collections. I find it unlikely that any big institution will want to maintain a working archive of thousands and thousands of electronic journals either. The NIH is a proponent of open access, and the pub med central open access subset is an ideal example of stored archives. But even then, journals still serve a valuable function, and copyright still matters because it's how they make money. I'm all for phasing out the current publication model, but the UCSF policy won't change anything without a viable alternative to the current semi-independent peer review process, that allows scientists to publish without paying hefty fees. This reality is why the policy doesn't have any teeth.
  
  --
  He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
8. Re:Copyrights? by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 03:14 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The only thing that needs to be done is for the researchers to be organized, but that is something that can be done cooperatively and which does not require a publishing company to facilitate.
  I can see a role here for a peer review facilitiator to come in, manage the process, and give it a certification that the industry accepts as valid. Perhaps this would cost the publishing institution ~$1000, but then the paper would be free to all. Once this piece of the puzzle comes into place, then I agree that journals can go by the wayside. You wanna go into business?
9. Re:Copyrights? by jank1887 · 2012-05-25 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  last time I looked through the Elsevier policy, you have rights to the manuscript, you have rights to the modified manuscript after peer review, and they have rights to the version of the peer reviewed article that they typeset for publication. they may also ask you to agree to certain limitations to your distribution of the pre-prints, but many of those are fairly tame.
10. Re:Copyrights? by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Not quite, but there is a movement among universities to reserve copyright on their faculties' publications. Elsevier can publish it, but the professore wouldn't be able to give them an exclusive copyright to the submitted paper.
11. Re:Copyrights? by pepty · 2012-05-25 06:58 · Score: 1
  
  Researchers / institutions can coordinate to bring together a couple dozen reviewers, and then some random subset can review a particular paper; if the paper passes review, that subset applies a group signature for the group of reviewers and concatenates it to the paper, which is then published, or else sends anonymous feedback to the authors of the paper (which is what happens in the current system).
  Bear in mind that in many journals you'd have to go through that whole process for each individual paper , and a random subset could quite well include people who have no qualms with actively screwing over an author they hate/compete with.
12. Re:Copyrights? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  Bear in mind that in many journals you'd have to go through that whole process for each individual paper
  OK, but if it is already happening under the current system then we have not really taken any steps backward. If that is not happening under the current system, why would it happen under the system I described?
  
  a random subset could quite well include people who have no qualms with actively screwing over an author they hate/compete with.
  I know for a fact that happens under the current system; it happened to one of the people in my own research group. It is unfortunate, by as was noted elsewhere there are limits to how anonymous authors and reviewers can actually be, especially in very specialized fields where everyone knows what everyone else is working on.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
13. Re:Copyrights? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  You wanna go into business?
  Thanks for the offer, but what I am trying to do is take the entire business aspect out of this ;-)
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
14. Re:Copyrights? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-05-25 07:57 · Score: 1
  journals still serve a valuable function
  I disagree on this point; I think that it is possible with today's technology to do away with publishing companies entirely and to basically put all published research in the public domain (where it really should be). In the absence of a need to publish bound copies of journals, publishing companies really act as a trusted party that anonymizes submissions and reviewers, as well as randomly (and hopefully in an unbiased way) selecting reviewers for papers. I think the following building blocks could be used to completely replace that trusted party:
  
  Mix networks -- to anonymize the submissions
  Group signatures -- to anonymize reviews and to allow readers to verify that the paper actually passed the peer review process
  Commitment schemes -- so that author names can be revealed once a paper passes peer review, without revealing those names to the reviewers
  A system for securely choosing random reviewers; this is at least theoretically possible (e.g. using garbled circuits) and can probably done in a practical way (it is not all that different from the secure auction system for sugar beet contracts in Denmark).
  I may be missing a step here, but the process would look like this: each month, some group of research institutions chooses reviewers from a given field to participate in peer review; this should be done before papers are submitted, to reduce the chance of a conflict of interest. When authors submit papers, they send the paper through a mix network, along with an encryption key; when it is received, a random subset of reviewers is selected to review the paper. Each paper's reviews are then encrypted with the corresponding key, and are all posted on a commonly accessible website. Authors can then (possibly through an anonymity system) download all the encrypted reviews, but will only be able to decrypt the review corresponding to their own paper. When a paper passes the peer review process, the reviewers certify that by producing a group signature for the paper; upon receiving this signature, the authors open their commitments, and the paper can be published (at this point, it makes no difference where, since the digital signature certifies that the paper passed peer review; one difficulty is that an unscrupulous author could refuse to open their name, but will still have the signature, although this may not be a big deal -- the paper could be published by the institutions supporting the process without any name).
  
  Clearly this is a cryptography-heavy solution, but I think the technology is there -- none of the primitives I mentioned are too impractical to be used, although they are still pretty cutting edge.
  --
  Palm trees and 8
15. Re:Copyrights? by noh8rz3 · 2012-05-25 08:08 · Score: 1
  
  Money-making isn't the problem here. The problem is that the money-making model ends up limiting access to information, which we're calling a bad thing. Instead, you need a money-making model that results in open information (a good thing). Even if papers are freely disseminated, you need the following services:
  * peer-review coordination and facilitation
  * copy editing and type setting
  * distribution and storage repository. Other posters have commented on the dangers of papers no longer being available.
  * outreach to encourage research in the field of interest, encourage submissions. Being a booster to the field, so to speak.
  * tie-ins with conferences. Finding ways to actively grow the field, rather than be passive.
  * facilitate connections among researchers. Be like a social network for people in the same field.
  Holy cow, this could be epic!
16. Re:Copyrights? by LordVader717 · 2012-05-25 08:55 · Score: 1
  
  Go to a university library and you'll notice how the annuals from the mid nineties onward are all in pristine condition. Nobody uses them anymore and all they do is take up valuable library space, so many institutions have cancelled paper subscriptions
  Preserving paper archives is much more difficult and costly than digital archives, but there's a catch: Current copyright laws make it illegal for institutions to maintain their own archives, so they need to perpetually pay the journal subscription to access archives.
  Open access alleviates the problem because there's no single rights holder who can tell anyone what to do with published papers.
17. Re:Copyrights? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 09:41 · Score: 0
  
  Journal Editors are academics and therefore also colleagues so there are already conflict of interests.
18. Re:Copyrights? by codeAlDente · 2012-05-25 11:58 · Score: 1
  
  One valuable function of journals is the non-random selection of reviewers. I'd argue that an essential function of the peer review process is the selection of appropriate reviewers. Editors must account for the scientific expertise, and conflicts of interest, of any potential reviewer. Afterward, they must make editorial judgements based on personal interactions between authors and reviewers. These judgements are not just up or down. Publish or don't publish. There is an extended dialog in the review process that is mediated by the editor. Moreover, reviewers must know the authors' identity: in many scientific fields, the reputation of the authors, prior publication of their methods, etc., is integrated into the publication, and essential to the review process. Cryptography can't take that away. Further, there is no such thing as a 'trusted party'. There are many journals and various publishing houses. None in isolation can be trusted, but we can trust that they each want to publish more of the best science. How will that dynamic be replicated in a new one-size-fits-all system? I applaud and promote efforts to open up the publication of scientific data, but these efforts must take care to preserve the things that the current system gets right.
  
  --
  He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
19. Re:Copyrights? by codeAlDente · 2012-05-25 12:48 · Score: 1
  
  Cheers for reading the Elsevier policy, and communicating something that's not always appreciated by the non-scientific public: a lot of scientists do keep an archive of their work on their personal or lab website, and sometimes it' s nearly complete, with no secrets behind paywall. It's easy to release raw data, because journals copyrights usually just cover the particular words and figures that constitute an individual publication. Unfortunately there are risks, and this practice is not routinely rewarded on grant applications.
  
  --
  He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
20. Re:Copyrights? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 13:38 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, these "peer review facilitators" are called "open-access journals". There are thousands of them. (Check out the "Directory of Open Access Journals".) They work just great. The economics are much better. We'd all be better off if all journals were open access.
Let the Seed Grow by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 02:07 · Score: 0

Open access is one step, the other is for you reading this to encourage your children and everyone you know to promote/fund/do science. Science and Engineering will solve all of our problems just like they have throughout all of history. Plant the seed and don't stop watering.
1. Re:Let the Seed Grow by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 02:11 · Score: 1
  
  Chemist here. Science will not, nor will anything else, solve all our problems.
  Don't be an idiot.
2. Re:Let the Seed Grow by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  Your response was unfortunately obviously coming... please remember Science includes Social Science. Science and Engineering by definition are the things that discover how something works and solves a problem. Sure, some problems may be unsolvable, such as the heat death of the universe, but insofar as anything can be solved or made better, it will be through sci/eng (or chance).
3. Re:Let the Seed Grow by Nidi62 · 2012-05-25 03:02 · Score: 2
  
  Social Science isn't science. And I say that with a BA in History and a Master's in Political Science.
  
  --
  The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
4. Re:Let the Seed Grow by jank1887 · 2012-05-25 03:27 · Score: 1
  
  I think we should just go back to calling them all Philosophy. Then I could stop explaining to people why they're called PhD's.
5. Re:Let the Seed Grow by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 03:37 · Score: 0
  
  I wasn't going to go there, but yes, there's really just Philosophy (whether from an armchair or lab bench) and applied philosophy (engineering).
6. Re:Let the Seed Grow by bjorniac · 2012-05-25 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  I've got a PhD in physics, my partner a PhD in Sociology. Her dissertation consisted of obtaining qualitative data regarding a social phenomenon, building a model, collecting quantitative survey data and statistically analyzing that data to test hypotheses drawn from the qualitative data.
  So: Model building from a theoretical basis, hypothesis testing from observed data and analysis. That, my friend, is science. The only difference between her work and that of my colleagues who are experimentalists is that her instrument was a survey instead of an atomic clock.
  I, on the other hand, did a bunch of maths, and was an exception in my field by being able to test my work against observations. A master's in Polisci might not have got you close to science, but don't presume that science isn't being done in the social sciences - it is, and done right it can be of vital importance to the society we live in.
7. Re:Let the Seed Grow by Nidi62 · 2012-05-25 07:28 · Score: 1
  
  So: Model building from a theoretical basis, hypothesis testing from observed data and analysis.
  We did the exact same. However, the difference, and why I believe social science isn't real science, is in what is being measured. In biology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, even things like geology or archeology, the researcher is dealing with concrete, consistent laws and processes. The laws of physics do not change, basic biological processes do not change, if 2 chemicals react today they will always react. This means that, along with a descriptive capability, it allows for a very predictive capability in science. You could describe a phenomena today, and the same conditions will create the same phenomena millenia from now. It gives a measure of certainty to findings, because you know that the laws the findings are based on are not going to change. And as we learn and experiment, our knowledge of these concrete laws grows even better, which makes predictions even more accurate.
  Social science is very well equipped for descriptive analysis. It can tell you why the battle at Gettysburg played out the way it did. It can tell you why poverty or unemployment levels are the way they are, and the effects it has had on people. It can tell you how the counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have played out, and what contributed to the current situation we see today. What it cannot do, with any certainty, is tell you how the war in Afghanistan is going to end. It cannot tell you when the next war will occur, or what will cause it. It has no predictive capability whatsoever, because social science at its core relies on and studies something that is totally random, so irrational, as to preclude any attempt at predictability; people. People do not follow immutable laws, they don't behave rationally; just when you think you know what someone will do, they go and do something completely different. It is for this reason why I say social sciences aren't real science. In real science, you can say "based on our understanding of the laws, this should happen, and we should see results accurate within whatever measurement." In social science, they best anyone can say is "we think that, given these set of circumstances, this might happen, at roughly this rate/level/intensity, but there's no guarantee." This inability to accurately predict is why I argue that social science is not actual science.
  
  --
  The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
8. Re:Let the Seed Grow by bjorniac · 2012-05-25 21:16 · Score: 1
  
  I think you're confused about what sociologists do. They are not concerned with the outcome of wars, but more with the impact of social policy or phenomena. People as individuals may not obey immutable laws, but en mass they can be modeled quite effectively, just like gasses of particles can be modeled without knowing the motion of any individual particle. It is impossible to model the individual particles accurately due to their number, but given extensive properties (Temperature, Density, Volume etc) I can tell you how the gas as a whole will behave. Based on the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, I can never tell you exactly how any one particle will behave, only give you probabilities of certain behaviors, just like people. They aren't "rational".
  You absolutely can say within social science that certain things will happen at certain rates within tolerances - this is exactly what my partner did in her PhD. She performed statistical tests to show (at a 99% level of confidence) differing care-giving levels (measured by hours worked for family members) based on variables such as fertility of the individuals concerned.
  She can certainly tell you, with 99% accuracy, based on the number of children a woman in Togo has and her desired levels of fertility, what the probability of her getting AIDS in the next year is. She can compare this with Benin, which has a different social support structure, and show that, for instance, the more localized family networks reduce this fertility desire and in turn reduce instances of people developing AIDS. And she can absolutely tell you, ahead of time, what the impact of building a new road to a remote village will be in terms of fertility desires, migration and infection prevalence. With measurable, repeatable numbers, statistical significance, etc. If you changed "fertility preference" for "quark mass" and connectivity of a village for "phi^4 coupling" what she and I do end up looking almost identical, so I can't claim to be doing science if she isn't.
9. Re:Let the Seed Grow by Nidi62 · 2012-05-25 23:50 · Score: 1
  
  I think you're confused about what sociologists do. They are not concerned with the outcome of wars, but more with the impact of social policy or phenomena.
  I never said that's what sociology can do. I said social sciences. That includes, sociology, history, political science, and others. That why I gave several different examples of thing that social sciences can tell you. Amazing, you have a PhD, and yet you can't even read....
  
  --
  The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
10. Re:Let the Seed Grow by bjorniac · 2012-05-26 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  You know, I was trying to be polite - there's no need to be rude in response. You generalized to all social sciences, I showed that you were wrong with this generalization - that indeed some of the social sciences (namely sociology, with which I have quite some familiarity now) are sciences. Then you respond by saying things related to the outcome of wars. I then tell you that your statement isn't relevant as it doesn't address the point that indeed sociology is a science. Therefore the statement you initially made "Social Science isn't science" is false, by my counterexample. You simply tried to move the goalposts to mean "this set of things (most of which wouldn't qualify as social science) aren't science".
  Of course, I agree that history isn't a science. But I don't think many people would put it in a "social sciences" category, for myself it falls squarely in humanities.
Re:Open Access by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 02:36 · Score: 0

Open access is fabulous! (Knowing smirk)
More of a suggestion than a policy by codeAlDente · 2012-05-25 02:48 · Score: 4, Informative

So their "policy" is that taxpayers have the right to see published forms of research they funded, as long as it's OK with the journal publisher. From TFA: "Researchers are able to “opt out” if they want to publish in a certain journal but find that the publisher is unwilling to comply with the UCSF policy. “The hope,” said Schneider, “is that faculty will think twice about where they publish, and choose to publish in journals that support the goals of the policy.”

--
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
1. Re:More of a suggestion than a policy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 06:33 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, when I saw the headline I thought, "wow, amazing, that took guts". All of the faculty at a leading academic research institute actually refusing to publish in non open access journals would be huge; it would be like a major power finally declaring war in this smoldering conflict (and well overdue IMO). Then I saw the "opt out" clause and was deflated-- it is completely 100% meaningless. It's just basically saying "we support open access", but doesn't actually do anything.
  The one thing that the journals have as leverage is the prestige of the top journals, as others have noted. It would be very risky for non-tenured faculty to refuse a chance to publish in Nature, Cell, Phys Rev Letters, etc. You just can't ask them to do that. I see two possible solutions:
  1. The TENURED faculty at a significant number of top academic research centers do something like this, but with teeth. They agree that for 3 years, say, they will not publish in non open access journals. As a group, they have enough power to do this and make it matter, and if they do it together I think it could be with minimal damage to their careers. In fact, in the academic community, NOT being a part of the group doing this might hurt your prestige.
  2. The same groups of scientists can create new journals and submit their best papers there, so that in a reasonably short time frame these journals become as prestigious as the top closed access journals now.
  Ultimately the scientific community holds almost all of the cards here. I expect them to win, just wish they would hurry up. Really annoying when I can't read an article b/c my library doesn't subscribe to that journal.
2. Re:More of a suggestion than a policy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 13:41 · Score: 0
  
  I take it you're worried that everyone will just get waivers, but empirical evidence is to the contrary. The waiver rate at other institutions that have similar policies is quite low: 5% at Harvard. 1.5% at MIT.
Effect on Promotion and Tenure by cortex · 2012-05-25 03:36 · Score: 3, Interesting

Most researchers will think about this for about 2 seconds and then publish in the journal with the most prestige and highest impact factor that they can. Publishing in high impact journals is a major factor in promotion and tenure for professors, so until universities adapt their policies on promotion and tenure, professors will continue to published in prestigious and expensive closed access journals. When reviewing someone for promotion or tenure, high-level administrators don't have time to read all the journal articles a professor has published, so they really heavily on g-indices and/or h-indices that are based upon journal impact factor scores.
1. Re:Effect on Promotion and Tenure by mx+b · 2012-05-25 05:47 · Score: 1
  
  This makes me wonder: if they do not have the time to keep up on the progress of the research groups they "manage", why should they have the authority to make decisions like tenure in the first place? i.e., more tweaks to the bureaucracy are needed, not just promotion policies.
2. Re:Effect on Promotion and Tenure by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 11:46 · Score: 0
  
  When you get right down to it, the progress of those research groups IS the production of papers, in the same way that the productivity of an auto plant is automobiles. They aren't looking at papers as a lazy way to judge, they are looking at papers because papers are the important bit. A bunch of unpublished research doesn't help the greater scientific community at all.
"More what you'd call 'guidelines' than rules" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 03:42 · Score: 0

The best journals require exclusive rights in order to have a paper published. If a UCSF researcher wants to publish in one of those journals, he or she can "opt out" of the open access "requirement."
All universities should follow suit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-25 08:51 · Score: 0

UC San Francisco should only be a start. Open access should be the rule for all taxpayer funded research. Do you enjoy being unable to access research funded by your tax dollars? I sure don't. Please consider writing to your representative about FRPAA and signing the white house petition" on open access.
Score: 4.5 (funny, but trollish) by codeAlDente · 2012-05-25 12:50 · Score: 1

Much of social science research is hypocritical. On Thursday, the researcher teaches the university students to use independently and identically distributed samples. On Saturday, the researcher and students go to sporting events to loudly tout the proposition that the team from their university is superior to the team from the other university. On Monday the researcher selects a sample of these students for a research study, collects data, and does statistics. On Tuesday, the researcher publishes a paper stating that these students are an independently and identically distributed sample of the general population, despite the researcher's belief that they are, in fact, better than average people like you.

--
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.