The "Replication Issue" as written up in the Economist….

The article is here. Their money quote:

“Peer review should be tightened—or perhaps dispensed with altogether, in favour [sic] of post-publication evaluation in the form of appended comments. That system has worked well in recent years in physics and mathematics.”

The Replication Issue is a complicated one and is something that I am actively working on with colleagues around the country. I am most definitely not for getting rid of peer review. BUt the post-publications comments might be a good idea to add on.

Ersatz peer review in fly-by-night journals….

John Bohannon’s science paper is here. This is a huge deal for science and for academic scholarship. As a journal editor myself (and my journal is over a century old), the value proposition that we offer is the quality of our peer review.

Publishing a scientific paper….

A new model by Kravitz and Baker is here. Bradley Voytek’s blog entry on it is here (by the way, he’s an accomplished young neuroscientist and you can read his recent papers here).

So back to the new idea: basically the notion is that all submissions get published, but they go through pre-publication and post-publication review, ranking and discussion (think Faculty of 1000). Journal editors like me are obsolete, only managing editors survive–along with elected editorial boards. I guess all made possible by the wonders of technology.

My main concern is this (for those readers who are in the life sciences). Think about all those posters at the largest meeting you attend. Actually think about all those non-peer reviewed posters at the Society for Neuroscience meeting: thousands and thousands of them. Now, think about (even w. a ranking system) having to find the jewels among them.

But wait you say, you can use the ranking and computational tools to just view the very best….and I say, why then would you ever publish the very worst?

And what would it mean for promotion and tenure when any person could have 1000 first authorship papers—in Neuron?

So I remain skeptical.

Finishing up an NSF review panel

As always, it's been an interesting couple of days reviewing proposals
for the National Science Foundation. For me there is the additional
incentive of driving five minutes from home to get to the NSF here in
Arlington–a very short commute for Washington.

As we come to the end of November, the end of the Fall semester is
drawing near and with it, the opportunity to take time to think
strategically about where we are and where we are likely to go.
Certainly the uncertain state of the US economy is a factor. Likewise,
the urgent need of the National Capital Area for a dominant research
university of the caliber of say Penn, Chicago or Berkeley.

Jim