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A comment on Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality. Parent comment

Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by shas3 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:53PM (#13980585)
While it's hard to believe, there are entire fields where top journals can take 2 years to publish (no early publications, no culture of preprints, etc.) For example, in one subfield of EE where I once worked in mid oughts, the choice ws between an IEEE journal that took 2.5-4 yrs to publish or lesser known IET and online journals that published faster.

Such fields are few in 2017. But it's not implausible that in 2014 the only two quick forums in statistics he was aware of were Arxiv and lesser known journals.

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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by Xcelerate on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @09:07PM (#13982406)
There's entire trails of papers that cite each other on arXiv while they wait for a 1-2 year review for journal publication. It's crazy — the journal has in some regards become a formality necessary for career advancement, while the actual research in a field progresses in the form of postings on a preprint server.
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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by a_bonobo on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @10:32PM (#13982847)
> the journal has in some regards become a formality necessary for career advancement,

I think this is ever so slowly going away - the entire format of the journal is still a hangover from a print-only era and really needs to go away.

There are some good news: the NIH (medicine's US funding body) now allows preprints to be cited in grant proposals, one nail in the coffin of journals. See http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/nih-enables-investiga...

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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by ma2rten on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @12:44AM (#13983467)
Are you saying that journals are going away in favor of unpeer reviewed preprints? That seems like a big step backwards.
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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by adrianN on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @04:15AM (#13984299)
Peer review mostly guarantees that the paper is not ridiculously wrong. It's a pretty small hurdle to clear and whether or not a paper passes peer review depends mostly on the mood of the reviewers. I have received completely contradictory reviews for the same paper.
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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by ma2rten on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @10:14PM (#13992341)
Depends on the venue you publish in. One side effect of getting rid of peer reviews is that you need another indicator if a paper is worth reading, most of the time that's going to be author reputation. This means it's difficult for work from lesser known authors to get noticed (similarly to what happened here).
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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by dagss on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @02:19AM (#13983868)
It is a step forwards. The important thing is to get rid of the journals, then new evaluation systems can rise from the ashes. The peer review is letting more and more crap through anyway.
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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by MaysonL on Thursday March 30, 2017 @03:55PM (#13998381)
The willingness to cite a preprint would seem in and of itself to be a form of peer review, no?
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Re:Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality by sdenton4 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @08:44PM (#13982295)
The great thing about the arxiv, though, is that you can submit the preprint early while the paper goes through review at a 'real' journal.

Review takes time... Unless you submit to your own journal... I'm surprised good friend didn't help with a better choice of journal, even a non top tier one.

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