There is literally no other option than peer review for science.
Does peer review need to work the way that it does now with publishers as gatekeepers and an expectation that work will be reviewed for free? No, the process should absolutely change but it will still require peers to review new papers. Publishing before review and anonymous reviewers is a terrible idea.
If you read the article, they are suggesting a different approach to peer review, not doing away with it. They want to find ways to build in incentives for reviewers to make it worth their while to review rather than allowing it to continue as something that scientists do out of a sense of obligation.
They have an interesting approach but I think it doesn’t go far enough.
I had a thought and didn’t make it clear, added the last sentence that I’m referring to the new system allowing for anonymous reviews. That combined with publish before review is making a new system catered to malicious business interests. Tobacco companies would just love this system.
Now the idea of making the whole process more visible to a wider audience? Yeah, that could be a benefit.
Maybe, just maybe, if editors did a hint of work with all the money they steal from public science funding, we could stabilise the system towards more integrity and less quantity of publication. Or also just get rid of editors to obtain the same result, but this is sadly utopic today. Peer reviewing is not the problem, and probably still is the best way to assess research quality. However, tendency towards quantity over quality, and applied research over fundamental are what skews the process and its results
if editors did a hint of work with all the money
Exactly. Why do authors need to pay for review/publication but the reviewers are volunteer and the journals paywalled? There is a fundamental mismatch between who gets vs deserves the money.
Wait, reviewers are not paid?!
Not typically, no. There have been exceptions ofc, but peer reviewing is typically volunteer.
I had no idea. That’s fucked up.
Eh, it’s not as bad as it sounds TBH. Paid reviewers would have ethical and economic pressures that hinder their effectiveness. Non-specialists in the same field would end up responsible for reviews of articles they are only rudimentarily familiar with (think astrophycisists working on exoplanet formation and composition having to review papers on black hole implications for dark energy. They ‘could’ but are not the best qualified to do so). Needing to review enough papers to earn a living means this dilution multiplied 100-fold to get enough done.
With volunteering at least scientists that are interested in that paper’s topic, and hence are likely a specialist in it, are the ones looking at it and doing so at their leisure instead of needing to do 100 by weeks end to put food on their table.
Personally, I think all privatization involved should be removed. Volunteer reviewers to public non-profit journals paid either by donations or tax dollars and freely accessible to all.
Like paying them?
