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A core problem in science publishing today is that we have a system where the complex, multidimensional assessment of the rigor, validity, utility, audience and impact of a work that emerges from peer review gets reduced to a single overvalued "accept/reject" decision. https://twitter.com/sofiajaraujo/status/1291133358022557696
I loathe this system and the myriad ways it has poisoned science and the ways people navigate their careers in the field. But the pressure on even the most idealistic young scientists to conform to it in order to have a career is so strong that it has proven hard to change.
It's not like we don't know what a better system would look like - I and others have been advocating it for years. It would couple immediate, author-driven publishing (aka preprints) with ongoing post-publication peer review carried out by multiple individuals and groups.
The question we have always struggled with and that has held back efforts to change - is figuring out what the output of peer review should be if you're not accepting or rejecting papers for a journal, and how - or even if - to distill the results of multiple peer reviews.
The reason this is important, and hard, is that we have to displace journal titles and impact factors as the way that science and scientists are judged. And as wonderful as it sounds - "everyone should just read the papers and reviews" is not a viable solution.
We also have to make sure that any system we build doesn't reify - or make worse - the biases and power structures that plague the current science evaluation system and science writ large.
And in order to create, refine and propagate such a new model, we need scientists to participate as authors. But they feel they can't because they will be judged in the incumbent system. This is the rub - and the reason so many excellent ideas and implementations never took off.
It is why I thought - and still think - that steering a journal like @eLife that receives a lot of submissions and has a mission and backing to change is an important part of the solution. But, as I know too well, change from within has its own significant obstacles.
The long-overdue rise of preprinting in biology and medicine gives us a real opportunity. If we can simultaneously encourage preprints to become ubiquitous, and build a system for publicly reviewing preprints, we're a long way there.
We're doing this @eLife with @PreprintReview - and there are other great efforts including @ReviewCommons @PeerCommunityIn @PREreview_ @peeragescience @WellcomeOpenRes @PubPeer and more that are pushing in a similar direction.
I'm optimistic, but this is not an easy task, and there are both commercial forces and forces of inertia and conservatism that
are aligned against this, so we need as many people and groups pushing in the right direction in whatever way they think best and possible.
are aligned against this, so we need as many people and groups pushing in the right direction in whatever way they think best and possible.
