Transparent and/or anonymous attribution in scholarly communication

[Sarven Capadisli]

"
In scholarly articles and peer-reviews, the attribution for authors and
reviewers should be transparent (t) and/or anonymous (a)

A. (t) authors (t) reviewers
B. (t) authors (a) reviewers
C. (a) authors (t) reviewers
D. (a) authors (a) reviewers
"

https://twitter.com/Linked_Research/status/796297292731084801

Poll closes in 6 days. I'm curious to see and happy to share the results
(for whatever it is of worth).

If you don't use Twitter or don't wish to vote, your feedback is
appreciated here just as well.

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i

[Aliaksandr Birukou]

Hi Sarven,
I think the answer is "it depends":)
Different communities have different practices, and there are reasons for this - historical or cultural. I am not sure one can impose one standard. However, making their practices transparent (via CrossMark) would be a good thing!
...my five cents
Alex Birukou

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[Neil Chue Hong (SSI)]

I'd also say that there is another potential stage: you could for
instance have anonymous authors and reviewers until a decision is
made, then authors names and reviewers names are released (either
using double-blind until accept or light double-blind see
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html).

Or is this what you mean by option c)?

Best regards,
Neil

--
Neil Chue Hong
Director, Software Sustainability Institute
EPCC, University of Edinburgh, JCMB, Edinburgh, EH9 3FD, UK
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5957
http://www.software.ac.uk/

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/neilchuehong
Twitter: http://twitter.com/npch
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8876-7606

[Sarven Capadisli]

On 2016-11-09 12:52, Aliaksandr Birukou wrote:
> Hi Sarven,
> I think the answer is "it depends":)
> Different communities have different practices, and there are reasons for this - historical or cultural. I am not sure one can impose one standard. However, making their practices transparent (via CrossMark) would be a good thing!
> ...my five cents
> Alex Birukou

Hi Alex!

I agree with you that the results should not be generalised or taken out
of context based on the reasons you gave. However, we should be careful
to not take things for granted just because there was a particular
arrangement in the past or a supposed cultural shift, e.g., was it ever
up for debate in public for all to vote on or was it decided by a few?
Some of the existing practices may be archaic, and it'd be good to
revisit and understand better so that we don't halt the evolutionary
process.

Aside: re: CrossMark, looks like a nice initiative probably covering the
most common use cases. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to
operate strictly within the framework where 1) I can't use my own
identifier, i.e., http://csarven.ca/#i , 2) the content is ultimately
under the control of a 3rd party service, e.g., the URLs of the
articles/reviews are not under the authority of the authors, reviewers.

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i

[Sarven Capadisli]

On 2016-11-09 18:21, Neil Chue Hong (SSI) wrote:
> I'd also say that there is another potential stage: you could for
> instance have anonymous authors and reviewers until a decision is
> made, then authors names and reviewers names are released (either
> using double-blind until accept or light double-blind see
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html).
>
> Or is this what you mean by option c)?
>
> Best regards,
> Neil

Hi Neil,

All of the options were meant to be pre and post publication. I made no
differentiation.

As far as I know, the predominant case where a work is "accepted for
publication" is that, authors are eventually attributed and publicly
identifiable, whether they were identifiable in the pre publication
process or not. Reviewers may or not may be revealed. I'd be grateful to
get more insight on this from those that know the field better.

I posed option c) and d) to see if people had any preference to seeing
authors remaining anonymous in pre and post publication. If the common
practices allow reviewers to be anonymous in either pre or post, or
both, it'd be interesting to know if there are any particular scenarios
why that shouldn't be the case for the authors as well. It goes without
saying that authors receiving attribution is ingrained in the academic
"system". The question is, shouldn't reviews be on equal grounds? This
is the type of discussion I'd like to learn more from.

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i

[Neil Chue Hong (SSI)]

Thanks Sarven.

the link in my original post gives background and references on the
varying reasons for anonymity vs transparency during the
pre-publication process. Basically, these come down to removing bias
and removing herding vs identifying conference "spamming".

My own experience and opinions around open vs anonymous peer reviewing
is set out in this joint-authored paper:
https://f1000research.com/articles/3-271/v2

Basically, there are issues around both attributing and anonymising
reviewers (sometimes depending on their seniority) which point to a
requirement to changing the traditional author / reviewer relationship
to one of collaboration rather than competition.

Best regards,
Neil

[Sarven Capadisli]

56% A. (t) authors (t) reviewers
10% B. (t) authors (a) reviewers
6% C. (a) authors (t) reviewers
28% D. (a) authors (a) reviewers

127 votes • Final results


-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i