tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post5235307443840385594..comments2024-03-28T13:39:27.601-07:00Comments on DSHR's Blog: Mass-market scholarly communicationDavid.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-20862212656758071412007-05-17T20:43:00.000-07:002007-05-17T20:43:00.000-07:00Way down in the over 200 comments on Staurt Stanif...Way down in the over 200 comments on Staurt Staniford's <A HREF="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2470" REL="nofollow">follow-up</A> is <A HREF="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2470/189866" REL="nofollow">this sub-thread</A> discussing whether to set up a <I>Transactions</I> part of <A HREF="http://www.theoildrum.com" REL="nofollow">The Oil Drum</A> where posts voted by the community to be of archival quality would be migrated after re-formatting and editing to take account of the comments.<BR/><BR/>Also, James Hamilton posted <A HREF="http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/05/northern_ghawar.html" REL="nofollow">this</A> more readable summary of Stuart's follow-up for those finding the monster to hard to follow.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-20482338820040921402007-05-15T18:53:00.000-07:002007-05-15T18:53:00.000-07:00Stuart Staniford has posted an impressive follow-u...Stuart Staniford has posted <A HREF="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2470" REL="nofollow">an impressive follow-up</A> to the <A HREF="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2441" REL="nofollow">post</A> that originally inspired this discussion.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-91774687652045339302007-04-26T22:14:00.000-07:002007-04-26T22:14:00.000-07:00Clearly, some staff at scientific publishers are s...Clearly, some staff at scientific publishers are scared enough of the encroaching blogs to over-react. From <A HREF="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/26/1549206&from=rss" REL="nofollow">Slashdot</A>:<BR/><BR/>"Recently, the well-read science blog Retrospectacle posted an article on a scientific paper that concluded that alcohol augments the antioxidant properties of fruit. The blog post reproduced a chart and a table from the original article and everything was fully attributed. When the publisher John Wiley & Sons found out, they threatened legal action unless the chart and table were removed."<BR/><BR/>Shelly Batts, who posted the <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/antioxidants_in_berries_increa_1.php" REL="nofollow">offending material</A>, complied with the takedown request but reconstructed the table and chart by hand in Excel. Science proceeded majestically on its way. After a storm of blog and e-mail protest, Wiley <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/victory_a_happy_resolution.php" REL="nofollow">graciously apologized</A> and acknowledged that she had <A HREF="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/tacou.html" REL="nofollow">fair use rights</A> under the University of Michigan's subscription.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-13977167141583412512007-04-24T09:24:00.000-07:002007-04-24T09:24:00.000-07:00Thank you all for your comments. I'm hopeful that ...Thank you all for your comments. I'm hopeful that this discussion will influence the final report of the workshop, so more comments are welcome. Some quick notes:<BR/><BR/>* Peter Suber's influential <I>Open Access News</I> blog <A HREF="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_04_22_fosblogarchive.html#2312087172567822381" REL="nofollow">notices</A> this post!<BR/><BR/>* There is already a <A HREF="http://en.dahnielson.com/2006/09/mimetex-plugin.html" REL="nofollow">plugin </A>for the WordPress blog platform that supports math symbols. It uses a public server that interprets LaTex tagged as "tex" into an image that gets embedded in your HTML. A quick search couldn't find a equivalent for Blogger or other platforms, but it would clearly make a big difference to blog-science.<BR/><BR/>* The problem of the least publishable unit is real. It is exacerbated by the proliferation of low-quality journals I referred to in this post. In computer science it is handled to some extent by workshops, which are treated as a less formal mode of publishing partial or work-in-progress results without disqualifying them from later, more formal publication. In a sense blog-science provides a continuous workshop of this kind.<BR/><BR/>* Its interesting that both the comments from grad students stress the problems caused by the lack of transparency of the peer-review process. As research fields become more and more specialized, and thus the community of peers smaller, these problems become worse and worse.<BR/><BR/>* Clearly, I should have searched better before writing! Dennis McDonald's <A HREF="http://www.ddmcd.com/managing-technology/a-comparison-of-blogging-and-journal-peer-review.html" REL="nofollow">first</A> and <A HREF="http://www.ddmcd.com/managing-technology/more-comparisons-of-journal-peer-review-and-blogging.html" REL="nofollow">second</A> posts comparing blogging and peer-review from last November make some important points.<BR/><BR/>* As I said, I'm not good at time-scales. So no-one should expect blog-science to obsolete traditional publishing quickly (if at all). Note that it was 11 years after arXiv started before a major discovery (<A HREF="http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept06/library_arXiv.html" REL="nofollow">Perlman's proof of the Poincare conjecture</A>) was published there without being published in traditional journals.<BR/><BR/>* Far-sighted traditional journals are gradually becoming more blog-like. The <A HREF="http://www.bmj.com" REL="nofollow"><I>British Medical Journal</I></A> has long been a leader in this area with its "Rapid Response" feature (see a <A HREF="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/332/7544/752" REL="nofollow">typical paper</A> and its <A HREF="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/332/7544/752" REL="nofollow">responses</A>. Disclosure: BMJ is hosted on Stanford's <A HREF="http://highwire.stanford.edu/" REL="nofollow">HighWire Press</A>). Subscribers can, and frequently do, submit comments on papers, editorials and other elements of the BMJ which get moderated and attached to the relevant "post".David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-11294769534094250432007-04-23T17:40:00.000-07:002007-04-23T17:40:00.000-07:00Blogs certainly do provide a very effective means ...Blogs certainly do provide a very effective means for developing and disseminating information. However, I do not think that they will completely displace other methods. Really fast moving ideas tend to be developed on IRC or other more immediate channels. I also think that publications will continue to have value for describing established research ideas once they have come to some conclusions on the blogs. Blogs seldom provide the coherent structure of a well written paper: background, idea, realization of idea, results of putting the idea into practice, future directions.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00919983784108289426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-5097678805442356962007-04-23T17:25:00.000-07:002007-04-23T17:25:00.000-07:00This is great stuff. I've tried to address these i...This is great stuff. I've tried to address these issues from the perspective of someone who started out in academia but switched to consulting. What I see happening is people who blog a lot rediscovering a lot of what is already known by people who study the processes (formal and informal) by which research is conducted and disseminated. I've published some of my thinking about blogging and peer reviewed journals on my blog; here is one post: "More Comparisons of Journal Peer Review and Blogging" (http://www.ddmcd.com/more_comparisons.html).Dennis D. McDonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09380077706521105704noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-6452216305746196652007-04-23T13:46:00.000-07:002007-04-23T13:46:00.000-07:00I absolutely love the idea of enabling research to...I absolutely love the idea of enabling research to receive feedback online in real-time. And, the possibility of tracing the research process throughout its development, within a blog, allows those interested in taking the research a step further to do so more effectively.<BR/><BR/>As a PhD student just finishing my third year, I have already observed and been frustrated by the inefficiencies of academic research. I have three specific "pet peeves", which I expect "blog science" would solve:<BR/>1) Least Publishable Unit: numbers count when it comes to papers published, and students in my lab and others play into this rule by turning what could be a single stellar paper into as many papers as possible with incredible amounts of overlap. In the worst cases, the same research is published time and again in different packages. Blog science would allow researchers to keep a constant log of their research as discoveries are made. The quality of an academic would be based not on the number of papers listed on their CV, but on a peer voting system, and perhaps number of links to the work (i.e. usefulness of research).<BR/>2) Academic Rivalry - as mentioned above, the small community that is able to review a given paper topic is affected by competition. A good friend of mine began submiting a paper for review last year, but was rejected multiple times by reviewers working on the same problem. I suspect that these researchers wanted to supress his work until theirs was ready to publish first. These researchers have since adopted aspects of his approach. Blog science would have allowed him to post his ideas without this competitive censure.<BR/>3) Time: this is a generational and efficiency problem, as mentioned above by David. I have very little patience for the long wait time of peer reviewed journals or even conferences to receive input on research. Getting feedback on research I did over a year ago is simply not that useful.<BR/><BR/>David's ideas are excellent, and I would like to start using this method of sharing scientific discoveries and ideas immediately. In my opinion, three things are necessary to enable "blog-science"<BR/>1) Latex enabled blogging<BR/>2) An effective voting system, as David discusses above<BR/>3) Acceptance by the academic community of "blog science". I believe this third point would quickly follow from effective implementation and use of the first two.Corinnehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14205740009159044848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-3670953972641294732007-04-23T04:12:00.000-07:002007-04-23T04:12:00.000-07:00As someone who has often wondered how appropriate ...As someone who has often wondered how appropriate the mysterious process of peer-review is, I completely agree that "blog-science" can make a big difference. I agree with most of the advantages David has listed. Here's one more advantage I think would matter a lot:<BR/>Most conferences that I have known do not want to run the risk of any <B>perception</B> of unethical behavior. They require that colleagues of the author(s) from the same research group / department / institution or colleagues who have been co-authors in the past (depending on the degree to which they apply this perception of unethical behavior tenet) must not be reviewers and/or must not even contribute to a discussion of pros and cons of the paper during a program committee meeting. They are even asked to step out of the room during a discussion of the concerned paper. This may sound reasonable. But, we are actually artificially limiting the "peer-review" process through these "politically correct" rules. Why shouldn't a colleague contribute to reviewing or to a discussion during the PC meeting? Especially if the colleague happens to be one of only a handful of researchers working in a niche area?<BR/><BR/>Because of the transparency offered by "blog-science", it should be perfectly fine for anybody to review and comment on a piece of work. It doesn't matter "who" says something; what matters is "what" is being said! So, colleagues and former co-authors are also more than welcome to say anything they wish. What they say or how they vote is not kept a secret through a mysterious process, because of which they could have been suspected of playing nepotism or being biased. Rather, what they say is out there for the whole world to see!Prashanth Bungalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01334641930208150429noreply@blogger.com