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Comment by hk__2 | Hacker News Reader

> These editors offer no real added value

Peer reviewing maybe?

The "peer" part of "peer review" means it's other scientists in the field doing the reviewing. The editor only acts as matchmaker/anonymisation filter, and maybe does the most trivial part of reviews (typos, layout, that sort of thing).

What if you can't trust the other scientists to review the work of their peers fairly?

Why, then you simply get an incredibly negative review, or one with impossible requirements, or some other nebulous reason why your work should not be published in that journal.

Source: currently working in academia in a full-time research position

No, I mean, that there is some probability that someone intelligent within the system is manipulating the infrastructure of the peer review system for an advantage.

I don't understand why I was downvoted for asking a question. I just meant to imply that there must exist some middle infrastructure, and I do not believe that it is a trivial problem to solve.

Source: I studied computer security systems that attempted to automate the flow of information to maintain security level thresholds on information types. When code 'touches' other code, meaning that it uses code with information at one security level to reason about code with information at another security level, unless you are particularly careful in the structure and organization of the code, information can leak out, structures can be manipulated, rules can be broken.

I am not saying scientists are unethical, I am saying they are human and prone to emotional reaction occasionally before objectivity (unless they are perfect). Combining information inference, intelligence, and an understanding of the flaws of an automated system; they are capable of 'accidentally' tweaking those things in their favor. It's not in the interest of science when this happens, and it requires a substantial amount of real intelligence to moderate. It's basically 'accidental bias'.

About the possible flaws in the reviewing process, the open-access publisher Frontiers (recently acquired by the Nature Publishing Group) proposes to reveal the names of the reviewers once the paper has been accepted, since they take part in the writing process:

"Frontiers is striving to remove any bias from the review process and acknowledge the reviewers for the significant contributions in improving the paper. To guarantee the most transparent and objective reviews, the identities of review editors remain anonymous during the review period. Only in case an article is accepted do their names appear on the published manuscript, without exceptions. However, if for any reasons a review editor withdraws during any stage of the review process, his/her name will not be disclosed." [Source : http://www.frontiersin.org/Design/pdf/ReviewGuidelines.pdf]

See also these two texts from the Open Scholar initiative:

- Independent Peer-Review Initiative http://www.openscholar.org.uk/independent-peer-review-initia...

- Academic self-publishing: a not-so-distant-future http://www.openscholar.org.uk/academic-self-publishing-a-not...

Why do you think peer accountability will work? This is a genuine question of mine; please do not infer ulterior intention.

> I don't understand why I was downvoted for asking a question.

Because your question, in the context of the thread, appeared to imply you think Elsevier and co. are doing something essential, in return for their 40% profit margins resulting in billions (!) of profit per year. Taken by itself it's an interesting question.

I don't really know, honestly. When groups are arguing between opposing world views, all of which can appear equally likely depending on data selection, I find that absolutely frightening that our current scientific process of peer review can not help us tell our heads from our asses. Or it does so often enough, that it's doing a very good job at keeping the bulk of knowledge stable. Science can be frightening.

Personally, I think it might take a lot more time than I've been alive to come close to a solution. I don't feel comfortable having an opinion on this, but I'm fine having questions. I don't intend to make implications with my questions, they are not consciously intentionally leading.

It's only been about 15 generations since the time of Galileo. I think science'll muddle through even if a couple of generations are wasted on dead-ends along the way.

There's stuff you expect (or have read, heard, thought about, observed) science to be about, and there's stuff you don't expect science to be about. The stuff you don't expect science to be about is the stuff that concerns me.

I don't know whether I can convey the change in understandings I've had about science since leaving academia. I don't want it to be typical, nor do I want it to be atypical in that the definition of atypical is dependent on the opposite of what is typical.

In that case journals won't gain you anything - since it's always other scientists doing that work for free.

They filter unfair peers by having multiple reviewers, and so can anyone else.

I don't have firsthand experience publishing in a peer reviewed journal, but from all my experience in academia, some of which involved very close observances, it doesn't seem to be a perfect solution.

What is your point? Can you expand, please.

I replied here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8595085

How would a journal fix that in any way which is not available to non-journal editor?

And papers generally get multiple reviewers (though that can be hard, especially while keeping things anonymous, in very small/tight fields)

I replied here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8595085

My point is that it requires intelligence to moderate and create balance between intelligence(s).

It does not answer my question: how do journals-affiliated editors make the situation any better than non-journals-affiliated editors?

I don't know, maybe a survey should be conducted across the scientific body, and some data should be collected.

But instead of building more decentralized, open and independent network they are strengthening a private company which already has strong position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge

Done by scientists that don't see a dime in the process.

Of course they see a dime: they receive public money. Elsevier are such geniuses: public money paid papers need to be paid a second time, and still, they remain unavailable for the public who has paid for it (twice). Rich geniuses.

Al-Khwarizmi was not talking about the publisher but about the scientists actually doing the peer-reviewing work: they don't see a dime from the publisher for this work (which is normal because it is part of their job as scientist to peer-review, what is abnormal is that the result of this work is given for free to private companies who put it behind paywalls).

I wasn't implying that the publishers but the reviewers were getting public money for that. Having spent around 12 hours between Sunday and Monday to write a single review for a journal paper, I must say that I am pretty surprised that this system has been working until now… The scientists are united in making their reviews, while someone on top is getting so much money for it (this catches up with your argument). I can't help myself considering us as naive people.

I see. Naive I don't know, not interested by money, certainly. Otherwise we would be following much more lucrative career paths, which are well, basically anything else than public research.

That said, I've encountered many scientists who simply never thought about it before we discussed it, and who now think the situation is absolutely crazy, as anyone would. The questions are: What can they do about it? Do they have the time to do it? How can they do it without hurting themselves?

Indeed, it's hard enough to get a position as it is, refusing to publish in prestigious journal owned by asshole publishers won't help young scientists. Older scientists often work with young ones, and they can't tell them "no we won't publish in the asshole-owned prestigious journal because it's the right thing to do", it wouldn't be fair.

The reality is that the solution can't really come only from individuals, it has to be a legal battle, not only for future publications (which is the easiest part), but also for all the past ones. The entire Elsevier "Freedom Collection" for example should be seized by governments (UN?) and made available for free to anyone on the internet and in public libraries worldwide. But in this "free-market" economy, this is not something people seems to be ready to ear, let alone understand.

> Indeed, it's hard enough to get a position as it is, refusing to publish in prestigious journal owned by asshole publishers won't help young scientists

It seems to vary strongly by field though, some fields seem much more bullish on "open access" than others.

I think the solution has to come from public funding agencies (i.e. from governments).

If my country's government says that from 2015 onwards, only publications that can be freely accessed count towards public grant requests, tenure and positions in public institutions, etc.; in a year no one would be published in the asshole-owned journals.

Instead, my government has policies that actively incentivize publishing in said journals (basically ISI JCR journal papers are what counts for everything).

>What can they do about it? Do they have the time to do it? How can they do it without hurting themselves?

Get the top people in a field to collectively decide to create/back a new journal. Because they are the top, what they publish in will "automatically" become prestigious, assuming the journal is selective. Once the journal is well established, the up and coming will start publishing there too.

> Of course they see a dime: they receive public money.

Scientists receive money for the work they do, but that money is generally in the form of grants for their own sciencing, I've never heard of "review grants".

As other pointed out, the peer reviewing is not done by the publishers. It is done by other scientists and coordinated by the editorial board of the journal, which most of the time consists in more scientists who are not paid by the publishers either.

However, I don't see any point in downvoting you as it seem people did, what you ask is a very common misconception that benefits to publishers and is thus amplified by them.

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