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Scientists: "publishing is broken, I can't believe how much I have to do to publish a paper now!"
Scientists as reviewers: "You have to repeat all these experiments in another cell type and do four more sequencing experiments to publish this short paper" 1/3
Scientists as reviewers: "You have to repeat all these experiments in another cell type and do four more sequencing experiments to publish this short paper" 1/3
It's harmful to science when small papers at "specialty" journals get reviewed like this. A couple years ago a short paper had four reviewers (!) and three demanded tons of work (I said publish it). Not every paper has to be a magnum opus, yet we force this upon ourselves. 2/3
It's harmful because this inhibits the publication of negative data, small but interesting datasets, and simple stories. This review style props up the "big paper"/glam approach to science since it's only worth the slog for "big" stories. Then the small ones just get buried. 3/3
bonus anectwote: Years ago we did a bunch of NMR dynamics and kinetics and one reviewer was adamant that we had to solve the crystal structure of the excited state (lmao). Fortunately, the editor overruled that and the paper was published. Editors can make a huge difference.
