ScienceOpen Q and A

[owlice]

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This thread is for questions/answers/discussion of the ScienceOpen effort arising from an exchange that started in Twitter.

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Owl "Pay us to publish your research, good or bad; no need for review before publication!" Is that correct?
SO Peer review is essemtial for scientific publishing. Too important to be done by a few gatekeepers & behind closed doors!

Owl How do you ensure papers are appropriately peer reviewed after the authors have paid for publication?
Owl What incentive does ScienceOpen have to ensure peer review? None after payment for publication AFAICS.
SO 1. We ensure that everyone is able to judge whether it has been appropriately peer reviewed. 2. We invite reviewers

Owl Do you remove published papers that do not get reviewed after period of time and pay back the fee paid?
SO Neither the one nor the other. A system in which "published" is the only measure for "quality" is doomed.

Owl So anyone can pay to be "published," regardless of merit of paper. Same as predatory journals, then?
SO Far from it. Predatory journal just claim to do peer review behind the scenes. At ScienceOpen you can judge it's quality!

Owl True that predatory journals claim to do peer review. No guarantee of review on ScienceOpen, though.
Owl What is the utility of having preprints (from elsewhere) on your site?
SO These preprints are open to commenting and discussion as well, e.g. to gather feedback for further improvement.

Owl But the preprints are mostly for papers published elsewhere, so already peer reviewed and on record.

Owl Am trying to understand ScienceOpen. Am wary of sites that grab content from elsewhere yet want $.
SO Somehow I get the impression that you are one of the sceptics Good to be sceptical! Continue discussion on the phone?

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So I suggested an open discussion, have started this thread for it, and hope to continue the discussion here.

[owlice]

I will not be able to continue it until tonight/tomorrow, however, and hope that others with questions about ScienceOpen will post them here. Thanks!

[@Science_Open]

@Science-Open:
Given "that some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited" and "as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors" [ http://ils.indiana.edu/media/paper/PWJan07meho.pdf ] it's not too far fetched to assume, that peer-review - as used at the moment - is more a tool for gate-keeping subscription based business models of glamour journals then really safeguarding scientific quality. Public Post Publication Peer Review on the contrary is exclusively focused on the latter.

ScienceOpen sees its role in promoting accessibility to research (hence PMC, arXive and other content) and providing a platform for transparent and sound scientific debate as opposed to suppressing research based on its assumed missing glamour features. We bet on the capability of the research community to assess qualities of their own work as opposed to let this task be controlled by publishers with their biased business models.

We also believe in science/research being incremental as opposed to being glamorous. The interest in details of research differ depending on the researchers involvement in or closeness to the research (paper) at hand. Therefore it is safe to assume, that articles not being of any interest to a set of researchers may well be of interest to another. Public Peer Review and a lively debate on the other hand provide the best method to learn and increase the value proposition contained in any research paper at hand.

[Chris Peterson]

So I suggested an open discussion, have started this thread for it, and hope to continue the discussion here.

Not much to discuss, as far as I'm concerned. As a professional scientist, I'm not going to take seriously any paper that doesn't go through formal peer review. That's a system that works extremely well when properly applied (which it isn't always, but no system is perfect). I have no problem with pay-to-publish and open journals, but lack of peer review like that currently used by reputable journals is a deal killer.

[@textlabor]

As a professional scientist, I'm not going to take seriously any paper that doesn't go through formal peer review.

As a scientist and Senior Editor at ScienceOpen, I'm not going to take seriously any paper just because it went through "formal" peer review. Personally, I tend to judge papers on their actual quality and not merely based on the fact that it has been "approved" by an unknown number of unknown reviewers. Needless to say, evaluation by the scientific community is the most crucial part of scientific publishing. That's why we decided to open up the whole peer review process to the public, so that everybody can judge the quality of the review process. In the end everybody has to make up his/her own mind about a paper anyway. I think, the ability to read the reviewer's comments and to directly see the overall rating of an article will be very helpful in this regard. Much better than the mere information: This paper has gone through formal peer review. Quite poor isn't it?

Let me make this perfectly clear, the evaluation of research results by other scientists is absolutely essential. We simply do it the other way round: We make the paper public first and do the peer review afterwards.

[Chris Peterson]

As a scientist and Senior Editor at ScienceOpen, I'm not going to take seriously any paper just because it went through "formal" peer review. Personally, I tend to judge papers on their actual quality and not merely based on the fact that it has been "approved" by an unknown number of unknown reviewers.

If a paper is well focused on my area of research, I can judge its quality for myself. However, I read many papers that are outside my area, and the one and only way I have to evaluate their quality is if they've been through peer review. Not some sort of public review, but the sort that most journals utilize. Having both reviewed papers and had my own reviewed, it's the one system I place high confidence in.

[owlice]

@Science-Open:
Given "that some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited" and "as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors" [ http://ils.indiana.edu/media/paper/PWJan07meho.pdf ] it's not too far fetched to assume, that peer-review - as used at the moment - is more a tool for gate-keeping subscription based business models of glamour journals then really safeguarding scientific quality. Public Post Publication Peer Review on the contrary is exclusively focused on the latter.

What "gate-keeping"? Those "some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals" have been published. They haven't been held back; they are in the marketplace of ideas. Peer review does not keep anyone from reading them, but it does ensure they are of a quality worthy of publication in the first place.

What is to stop publication of papers that are of poor quality, are never peer-reviewed, and yet remain available as "published research" that may be used to bolster untenable positions because ScienceOpen does not provide any mechanism for getting rid of poor papers? It appears the answer is ... nothing.

ScienceOpen sees its role in promoting accessibility to research (hence PMC, arXive and other content) and providing a platform for transparent and sound scientific debate as opposed to suppressing research based on its assumed missing glamour features.

But this other content is already accessible. ScienceOpen doesn't make it any more accessible nor transparent, and for pre-prints, papers that may have been substantially edited before publication, why would anyone review them post-publication?

[@textlabor]

If a paper is well focused on my area of research, I can judge its quality for myself. However, I read many papers that are outside my area, and the one and only way I have to evaluate their quality is if they've been through peer review.

That's the whole point. You need assistance judging a paper that is outside your area. Once again: We do peer review – just after the article has been made public. Our public commenting and rating system is useful especially when the paper is outside your area. As soon as you encounter the article on our platform you can directly see:

1) Has the paper received any reviews or comments yet?
2) How many reviews have been written so far?
3) Who reviewed the paper or made comments? (names are given - profiles linked to ORCID.org)
4) What is the overall rating? (a five star system gives you an immediate estimation of the averall evaluation by the reviewers)
5) What are the positive points and concerns raised by the reviewers? (reports are visible)

Not some sort of public review, but the sort that most journals utilize.

Sorry, I didn't get that one...?! Do you mean "public peer reviewing" is generally of lower quality than "blind peer reviewing", done by 1-3 anonymous reviewers behind closed doors ( = the sort that most journals utilize)? We simply require our reviewers to submit their referee report under their true identity and allow the public to read their comments. I don't see how this should negatively affect the quality of the peer review process. I personally think that this adds an additional value.

[Chris Peterson]

Not some sort of public review, but the sort that most journals utilize.

Sorry, I didn't get that one...?! Do you mean "public peer reviewing" is generally of lower quality than "blind peer reviewing", done by 1-3 anonymous reviewers behind closed doors.

That's exactly what I mean.

[Psnarf]

I once read a paper in the computer science category that described how some programmers in India wrote a program in BASIC. I don't understand how that paper could have appeared in any peer-reviewed journal. Had that paper crossed my desk, I would have reached for my red WD stamp before finishing the abstract. [WD - Waddalo Dakrap]

[Chris Peterson]

I once read a paper in the computer science category that described how some programmers in India wrote a program in BASIC. I don't understand how that paper could have appeared in any peer-reviewed journal. Had that paper crossed my desk, I would have reached for my red WD stamp before finishing the abstract. [WD - Waddalo Dakrap]

I don't understand. What was the problem with the paper?