User: 3opan

Re:It's about time

On: NIH Proposes to Open Tax-Funded Research

I agree it is not simple to change the way
we do reviews. My experience is that there
are plenty of politics in science and reviewing.
Having just three to five reviewers, and no
feedback after something is published is
not perfect. Editors have plenty of power
to choose appropriate reviewers, and that
is often not fair.

My intuition is that peer review will be
sufficiently different in ten years. Science
finds a way to use good technology :)

Re:It's about time

On: NIH Proposes to Open Tax-Funded Research

It is very important and good news:
many authors of research papers,
especially in medicine, have to transfer
copyrights to journals in order to publish
(and get tenure or senior positions in
their institutions).

Copyrighted material is then owned by journals
that are NOT necessary nowdays. Peer review
can be done in better way over the Net,
since peer reviewers rarely get any money
for their effort. Some money gets into
editors pockets, but even that is often
minor. So, why should researchers give
copyright to journals who are not important
anymore, and also reduce accessibility to
their papers. That is definitely the next step
in freeing science (which is based on openness
for many centuries).

BTW, related site:
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html