Re:A Possible Fix for Scientific Publishing
by eesmith on Tuesday August 09, 2022 @04:30AM
(#32395483)
> I think that's up for the community decide. There have been high school science projects that got published before and were considered significant contributions.
I wrote many science fair projects to mean many in each science fair, not the rare few that produce novel and publishable results in the scientific literature.
Follow the instructions from a book about science fair projects. The result will be "well and honestly done work, with conclusions that may be reasonably drawn from the results" - exactly as you described. How many publications of "I synthesized aspirin from salicylic acid and acetic anhydride" do you want?
> up for the community decide
If this becomes a craze among high school science fair entrants, then the community will be high school science fair entrants. It will then be up to the to decide if tenured professors are allowed.
More to the point, I've long found "community" to be a difficult word to understand. How is it different from "users"? Are there users who aren't part of the community? Why aren't there multiple communities? We know there are multiple types of users (eg, HCI's "persona development".)
With no sense of what you want your community / user base to be, you can't tell if you've ended up with what you wanted.
> my understanding is that ORCID adoption is still limited (growing, but limited)
Last fall ORCID tweeted that many/most of the Nobel Prize winners had an ORCID. https://twitter.com/ORCID_Org/status/1445448209782894592 . One of the comments correctly pointed out "surprisingly a lot of researchers have their ORCIDs only as void placeholders required by their institutions to have."
That includes me.
> The current plan is to initialize the reputation system using citations - 1 citation = 1 upvote, essentially. It's not perfect, but it's the closest analog.
There are a lot of E. Smiths in the world. (This is what ORCID is trying to resolve.) Oh, and my name is $NOBEL_PRIZE_WINNER and email address is [email protected].
(Email addresses change as people move between institution. Someone's current email address might not be on any of their papers.)
Do preprints count as publications?
I tried to get around the publication system by having blog posts which were essentially preprints/publications. That failed - there's a disdain for the grey literature.
> But it's still the system that facilitates matching papers with the appropriate reviewers and referees, it's necessary.
Which is why it seems like you could start as an overlay system over existing preprint servers. They've already resolved issues about user id, audience, etc., which you could use a a starting point.
> That's to prevent small groups with agendas from creating echo chambers.
Real-world example: what PZ Myers refers to as the "panspermia mafia" - "They use their connections to promote a small family of fellow travelers."
> that the average actor is a good actor as I defined it early
Again, I urge you to consider that "good actor" is overly simplistic. If you truly think the system is broken, how are so many good actors not able to change it?
I wrote many science fair projects to mean many in each science fair, not the rare few that produce novel and publishable results in the scientific literature.
Follow the instructions from a book about science fair projects. The result will be "well and honestly done work, with conclusions that may be reasonably drawn from the results" - exactly as you described. How many publications of "I synthesized aspirin from salicylic acid and acetic anhydride" do you want?
> up for the community decide
If this becomes a craze among high school science fair entrants, then the community will be high school science fair entrants. It will then be up to the to decide if tenured professors are allowed.
More to the point, I've long found "community" to be a difficult word to understand. How is it different from "users"? Are there users who aren't part of the community? Why aren't there multiple communities? We know there are multiple types of users (eg, HCI's "persona development".)
With no sense of what you want your community / user base to be, you can't tell if you've ended up with what you wanted.
> my understanding is that ORCID adoption is still limited (growing, but limited)
Last fall ORCID tweeted that many/most of the Nobel Prize winners had an ORCID. https://twitter.com/ORCID_Org/status/1445448209782894592 . One of the comments correctly pointed out "surprisingly a lot of researchers have their ORCIDs only as void placeholders required by their institutions to have."
That includes me.
> The current plan is to initialize the reputation system using citations - 1 citation = 1 upvote, essentially. It's not perfect, but it's the closest analog.
There are a lot of E. Smiths in the world. (This is what ORCID is trying to resolve.) Oh, and my name is $NOBEL_PRIZE_WINNER and email address is [email protected].
(Email addresses change as people move between institution. Someone's current email address might not be on any of their papers.)
Do preprints count as publications?
I tried to get around the publication system by having blog posts which were essentially preprints/publications. That failed - there's a disdain for the grey literature.
> But it's still the system that facilitates matching papers with the appropriate reviewers and referees, it's necessary.
Which is why it seems like you could start as an overlay system over existing preprint servers. They've already resolved issues about user id, audience, etc., which you could use a a starting point.
> That's to prevent small groups with agendas from creating echo chambers.
Real-world example: what PZ Myers refers to as the "panspermia mafia" - "They use their connections to promote a small family of fellow travelers."
> that the average actor is a good actor as I defined it early
Again, I urge you to consider that "good actor" is overly simplistic. If you truly think the system is broken, how are so many good actors not able to change it?