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ric...@gedye.plus.com

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Oct 25, 2022, 7:58:21 AM10/25/22
to osi20...@googlegroups.com

An interesting post on Liblicense yesterday.

 

Richard

 

From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum <LIBLIC...@LISTSERV.CRL.EDU> On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
Sent: 25 October 2022 03:10
To: LIBLIC...@LISTSERV.CRL.EDU
Subject: The no-rejections peer reviewed journal

 

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <j...@asu.edu>

Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 16:59:47 -0700

I saw this today on Gary Price's curated news feed and slowed down over it a lot:

 

 

In principle, perfect sense:  we do the peer review, we tell you what we think of it, we let you read it and decide what you think of it.  In a world where the marginal cost of storing to your server rather than deleting is negligible, that can be done in a way that couldn't be done in a world of finite printable pages.  

 

But but but . . .  (1) Does the journal find a way to present the peer review material efficiently enough that I can decide quickly whether this article is one I want to read?  I don't want to read somebody's 10 page obsessive review to find out whether a 20 page article is worth reading.  (2)  How do we communicate through the wires that getting "published" in this journal is not in itself a positive credit towards promotion, salary, whatever?  (3) Do we risk transmitting the message that one scientist's "opinion" is as good as another's?  A slippery slope off to that side of this ski run.  They speak of restoring control to the authors, which sounds good, but in fact the complex ecology of the scholarly/scientific publishing community is a collective conversation among authors and readers structured to filter down what is written to a manageable and if not guaranteed then at least recommended to be of broad value.  

 

Jim O'Donnell

Arizona State University

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 25, 2022, 12:53:47 PM10/25/22
to ric...@gedye.plus.com, osi20...@googlegroups.com

What do you think of this policy Richard? For the list, here’s the gist of eLife’s new peer review policy (from the link you provided):

eLife is pleased to announce a major change in editorial practice. Building on its 2021 shift to exclusively reviewing preprints, the organisation is ending the practice of making accept/reject decisions following peer review.

From January 31, 2023, eLife will instead publish every paper it reviews as a Reviewed Preprint, a new type of research output that combines the manuscript with eLife’s detailed peer reviews and a concise assessment of the significance of the findings and quality of the evidence.

Michael Eisen, eLife Editor-in-Chief, says: “By relinquishing the traditional journal role of gatekeeper and focusing instead on producing public peer reviews and assessments, eLife is restoring control of publishing to authors, recovering the immense value that is lost when peer reviews are reduced to binary publishing decisions, and promoting the evaluation of scientists based on what, rather than where, they publish.”

As Jim O’Donnell noted in his Liblicense post, and as Lisa notes in her TSK post today (It Isn’t Fake Science, Because It Isn’t Science at All. It’s Dupery. - The Scholarly Kitchen (sspnet.org)), what about science fakery? Opening the gates on gatekeeping might be the right thing to do---time will tell---but it also might result in researchers needing to wade through a lot more content to find out what’s real and what isn’t and might further confuse an already confused public about what real science is saying. Interesting stuff.

Best,

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

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Anthony Watkinson

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Oct 25, 2022, 1:17:00 PM10/25/22
to osi20...@googlegroups.com, ric...@gedye.plus.com, Glenn Hampson
Dear Glenn and colleagues


I can see the logic in what eLife are doing and am only surprised that it has taken them so long to get round to formulating it but I wonder how many soundings they took from the wider scholarly communities as represented by all the representative learned societies that exist. The big problem seems to me that part of the peer review process has always been that someone else (not the author) takes the accept/reject decision and that this is the gateway to the VOR. It is really important to explain peer review to the wider world (especially journalists) and now it is intended we should say that there are so many million articles which are considered as part of the record of science because of particular processes and one other group.


Anthony


ric...@gedye.plus.com

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Oct 25, 2022, 7:08:32 PM10/25/22
to Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Glen,

 

I find it a little difficult to formulate a firm opinion on this policy without some idea of whether eLife has a policy of rejecting some articles without sending them for peer review and, if so, quite how that works and what proportion of submitted articles do get immediately rejected.

 

I also wonder what scenarios would play out when a reviewer says “this is a promising paper but it needs further work, or modifications to some of the methodology, or rechecking some of the calculations, etc”. Would the fact that the paper as submitted does actually get “published” reduce the likelihood that the author(s) of papers thus assessed would actually perform the recommended additional work? And if they did, would the revised paper replace or supplement the original one?

 

Richard  

 

From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>

image003.jpg

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 25, 2022, 7:51:15 PM10/25/22
to ric...@gedye.plus.com, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Interesting questions Richard. I’ll bcc Mike Eisen here and see if he has time to respond.

 

For additional reading (if you’re curious and have time), here are two neat historical perspectives:

 

 

If you’re SUPER curious and have LOTS of time, here’s a link to a presentation I gave for one of Sonia’s conferences in 2020 on peer review reform: BRISPE-presentation-final-Hampson.pdf (secureservercdn.net) --- not the final word on peer review by any means but attempting to untangle some of the many issues (like integrity and gatekeeping) that often get tangled in the bedsheets of peer review discussions.

 

Cheers,

Margaret Winker

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Oct 25, 2022, 10:32:09 PM10/25/22
to Glenn Hampson, ric...@gedye.plus.com, osi20...@googlegroups.com
Glenn and Richard, 
eLife describes their rejection policy and criteria on their website; they do not send all manuscripts to review. “During the initial submission phase, members of eLife's senior editorial team assess new submissions, often in consultation with members of the Board of Reviewing Editors or with external guest editors where necessary, to identify the ones that are appropriate for in-depth peer review." “Around 30% of submitted manuscripts are sent to external experts for in-depth peer review, and our overall acceptance rate is around 16%.” Of course, when the new policy is enacted, the proportion reviewed and overall acceptance rates will be the same. The accepted manuscript is not revised; it's called a Reviewed Preprint, published along with the eLife assessment, reviews, and authors' response if they wish. It appears the preprint could still be revised and the revision submitted to a traditional journal if the author wishes. 
Margaret 

Margaret Winker, MD

Trustee, WAME

***

wame.org

@WAME_editors

www.facebook.com/WAMEmembers



On Oct 25, 2022, at 6:51 PM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:



Interesting questions Richard. I’ll bcc Mike Eisen here and see if he has time to respond.

 

For additional reading (if you’re curious and have time), here are two neat historical perspectives:

 

 

If you’re SUPER curious and have LOTS of time, here’s a link to a presentation I gave for one of Sonia’s conferences in 2020 on peer review reform: BRISPE-presentation-final-Hampson.pdf (secureservercdn.net) --- not the final word on peer review by any means but attempting to untangle some of the many issues (like integrity and gatekeeping) that often get tangled in the bedsheets of peer review discussions.

 

Cheers,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

image002.jpg

 

 

 

From: ric...@gedye.plus.com <ric...@gedye.plus.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2022 4:08 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: The no-rejections peer reviewed journal

 

Glen,

 

I find it a little difficult to formulate a firm opinion on this policy without some idea of whether eLife has a policy of rejecting some articles without sending them for peer review and, if so, quite how that works and what proportion of submitted articles do get immediately rejected.

 

I also wonder what scenarios would play out when a reviewer says “this is a promising paper but it needs further work, or modifications to some of the methodology, or rechecking some of the calculations, etc”. Would the fact that the paper as submitted does actually get “published” reduce the likelihood that the author(s) of papers thus assessed would actually perform the recommended additional work? And if they did, would the revised paper replace or supplement the original one?

 

Richard  

 

From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: 25 October 2022 17:54
To: 'ric...@gedye.plus.com' <ric...@gedye.plus.com>; 'osi20...@googlegroups.com' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: The no-rejections peer reviewed journal

 

What do you think of this policy Richard? For the list, here’s the gist of eLife’s new peer review policy (from the link you provided):

eLife is pleased to announce a major change in editorial practice. Building on its 2021 shift to exclusively reviewing preprints, the organisation is ending the practice of making accept/reject decisions following peer review.

From January 31, 2023, eLife will instead publish every paper it reviews as a Reviewed Preprint, a new type of research output that combines the manuscript with eLife’s detailed peer reviews and a concise assessment of the significance of the findings and quality of the evidence.

Michael Eisen, eLife Editor-in-Chief, says: “By relinquishing the traditional journal role of gatekeeper and focusing instead on producing public peer reviews and assessments, eLife is restoring control of publishing to authors, recovering the immense value that is lost when peer reviews are reduced to binary publishing decisions, and promoting the evaluation of scientists based on what, rather than where, they publish.”

As Jim O’Donnell noted in his Liblicense post, and as Lisa notes in her TSK post today (It Isn’t Fake Science, Because It Isn’t Science at All. It’s Dupery. - The Scholarly Kitchen (sspnet.org)), what about science fakery? Opening the gates on gatekeeping might be the right thing to do---time will tell---but it also might result in researchers needing to wade through a lot more content to find out what’s real and what isn’t and might further confuse an already confused public about what real science is saying. Interesting stuff.

Best,

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

image001.jpg

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