iMechanica - open access. journals - Comments

We Should Find a tool. maybe dynamic review papers.

RoozbehSanaei — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:46:14 -0400

This is very patiently academic way of searching for papers.

what about people who just like to generate more papers, without so much pateincy, many authors, just rely on factors like citation index, impact factor, and university historical name to choose between answers.

He assumed that the question is already exist, but i am sure many people just rely on same factors even to choose their question. they are even successful! may be because others do same and review their work!.

in this publication system."SELF FEEDBACK" is unlimited!

we should find a better way, i think dynamic review papers may be a better tool to compare papers ,methods ,models, etc without need to read them exactly.instead of relying only on unreasonable factors.

Speaking in particular of the review process in PlosONE

Mike Ciavarella — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:43:08 -0400

This of the review introduces many interesting new features. Maybe these are the core of the fantastically rapid success of PlosONE --- he is taking many controversial papers rejected from mainstream literature because of nepotism, frienships, inner circles, and other non-scientific reasons in the standard Literature, to publish even paper previously rejected by other Plos Journals! I was pleased to see many of my ideas discussed previously about my rejected Int J Fatigue already realized here ---- they suggest for example to eliminate some reviewers based on authors' suggestion, if there are suspicions of unfriendly emotional a priori unbias ...

No wonder the most interesting science is more and more in PlosONE these days. It is very innovative. I look forward for them to have an interest in Engineering!

Mike

PLoS ONE will provide all authors with an efficient and
"hassle-free" editorial process. Our aim is to identify those
submissions that warrant inclusion in the scientific record and present
them to the scientific community with as few hurdles as possible.

The editorial process is run by the journal's extensive board of Academic Editors
(AEs) who work together to orchestrate the peer-review process. AEs are
invited to handle submitted manuscripts on the basis of the content of
the manuscript and their own expertise. The AE evaluates the paper and
decides whether it describes a body of work that meets the editorial
criteria of PLoS ONE. AEs can employ a variety of methods, alone or in combination, to reach a decision in which they are confident:

They can conduct the peer review themselves, based on their own knowledge and experience
They can take further advice through discussion with other members of the editorial board
They can solicit reports from further referees

After appropriate consideration by the AE, a decision letter to the
author is drafted. This letter may also be circulated to other members
of the editorial board, who are given a short time to comment on the
editorial decision.

There are several types of decisions possible:

Accept in principle
Minor revision
Major revision
Reject

Upon acceptance, the manuscript is checked by PLoS ONE
staff to ensure that it is in a form that will allow it to be
efficiently handled by our production system. The authors will be
queried and allowed to make any final minor revisions that are needed.

This is the final stage at which authors will see their manuscript
before publication. The authors' files will be carefully tagged to
generate XML and PDF files, but will not be subject to detailed
copyediting (see Overview of the Production Process).
It is therefore essential that authors provide a thoroughly proofread
and checked manuscript, following the author checklist and any comments
from PLoS staff.

4. Reviewer Selection

Selection of reviewers for a particular manuscript is the
responsibility of the AE and is based on many factors, including
expertise, reputation, specific recommendations of authors and academic
editors, and the AE's own knowledge of a reviewer's past performance.

As
part of our editorial procedure, we confer with potential reviewers
before sending them manuscripts to review. Reviewers should bear in
mind that even these initial messages or conversations contain
confidential information, which should be regarded as such.

5. Writing the Review

The purpose of the review is to provide the editors with an expert
opinion regarding the quality of the manuscript under consideration.
The review should also supply authors with explicit feedback on how to
improve their papers so that they are acceptable for publication in PLoS ONE.
Although confidential comments to the editors are respected, any
remarks that might help to strengthen the paper should be directed to
the authors themselves. A good review would answer the following
questions:

What are the main claims of the paper?
Are the claims properly placed in the context of the previous literature?
Do the experimental data support the claims? If not, what other evidence is required?
Who would find this paper of interest? And why?
In what further directions would it be useful to take the current research?

Revisiting open access

Biswajit Banerjee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:43:52 -0400

Via Coturnix here's a link to an excellent article by Peter Suber on why open access is the way to go in scientific publishing.

Suber sees two stages in knowledge dissemination. In the first stage

"
You solve the last-mile problem for a published journal article when
you put your hands on a hardcopy or display a digital copy on a screen
in front of your face. This requires open access (OA) or money to pay
for toll access (TA). "

In the second stage

"
Suppose you have a question. You're lucky if some careful, curious
researchers have already asked the same question and done some of the
needed research. You're luckier if some of them have taken the
research far enough to answer the question, write up their answers, win
the approval of peer reviewers, and publish them. You're even luckier
if there's a scientific consensus on the right answer to your question
and that among the published papers on it, at least one is up to date,
written in your language, and written at your level of understanding.
You're even luckier if the Stage One problem has been solved and,
thanks to OA or money, you have access to at least one of the
enlightening papers which meets all your conditions.

It may look like this scenario goes about as far as it can to close the
gap between you and existing knowledge. But it leaves some nagging
parts of what I'm calling Stage Two of the last-mile problem. How do
you go beyond access to answers? We grant that you're darned lucky,
and that if you could find one of the enlightening papers, then you
could retrieve it, and if you could read it, then you could understand
it. But not all published papers meet your conditions for an
enlightening paper. In fact, nearly all of them don't. How do you
know that an enlightening paper even exists? When you go looking, how
can you find one that meets your conditions, and distinguish it from
other papers which happen to use the same keywords or even address the
same question?

Without solutions to these problems, you might as well be trapped in a
maze knee-deep in conflicting maps thrown over the wall by people
trying their utmost to be helpful.

For people with less luck, Stage Two problems are more numerous and
more difficult. How do you do find a good answer when there's no
consensus? When there *is* a consensus answer, how do you learn what
it is when papers describing it are mixed together in your search
results with papers describing discredited answers? How do you learn
the consensus answer when there isn't a good paper in your language or
at your level of understanding, or when the best papers use terms you'd
never think to use in your search query? How do you get answers when
nobody has yet posed the question exactly as you have posed it, and
when partial answers lie scattered in dozens or hundreds of different
papers in different journals in different languages and even different
fields?

To solve these problems, access to the papers is necessary but not
sufficient. But while OA is only part of the solution to the Stage Two
problem, it's a precondition to most other parts of the solution. No
tools yet suffice to solve the Stage Two problem, and maybe no tools
ever will. But the tools that help us inch toward a solution
presuppose OA literature and data the way telescopes presuppose open
access to the sky. In fact, one of the primary benefits of OA is to
provide the inputs to a new generation of sophisticated tools to
facilitate research, discovery, and analysis. Whatever methods we use
to attack Stage Two problems, OA will streamline our solutions and lack
of OA will limit their scope and slow us down".

Read the full article if this issue is of interest to you.

-- Biswajit

yes, and Harvard Library is moving....

Mike Ciavarella — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:39:36 -0400

See

Harvard to collect, disseminate scholarly articles for faculty

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

Discussion on Slashdot

Mike Graham — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:09:23 -0400

There is currently a discussion about whether academic journals are obsolete on the popular technology news and information site Slashdot . I thought it might be interesting to the same people who are interested in this thread.

Why Google SCHOLAR will stop this oligopoly of publishers

Mike Ciavarella — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:21:25 -0400

http://imechanica.org/node/3265
Why Google SCHOLAR will stop this oligopoly of publishers

I agree very much with you, and indeed this is what I said

Mike Ciavarella — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:31:17 -0400

See

PROPOSALS FOR IMECHANICA Submitted by Mike Ciavarella on Sat, 2008-04-05 16:45.

Hello imechanica users: I
launch a few ideas. Can we improve imechanica stealing ideas from
successful web systems like google, amazon, wikipedia, myspace,
youtube? Taking the best of the various worlds to improve our
imechanica?

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

Wiki-Style review papers high light non peer-reviewed ideas!

RoozbehSanaei — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:17:55 -0400

Wiki-Style review papers can
speed up science progress very much.

I think one of the important reasons
of much citation to many classical papers and methods is their popularity. When
a new researcher wants to start a scientific work he should review many papers
and see which methods, materials and models are better by comparing many
factors. But number of developed methods, materials and models are more than
what an ordinary person can read. And much of them are not well developed or
they are not good anyway. Many researchers have to finish their entire work in a
limited time. Then they have to don’t pay so much attention to this selection
and start they work as soon as possible by relying on more cited papers. And in
other side most researchers tend to base their work on more popular things.

Most of researchers start their
work with reading review papers who comprise advantages and disadvantages of
different methods and …, but even good reviewers had not so much information and
enough time to get information in order to categorize and comprise all of the
methods and ways available and they adequate to most popular methods. Then many
new methods and much availability may die in this process. (Even if they be published
even in good journals).

Wiki-Style Review papers can speed
up research communications very much and permit new ideas to burgeon. Every
author can add his paper to this review and in other side he knows his paper better
than anybody else. This is easier and less time consuming than what a one
person can do in a review process. Also authors tend to introduce their works
to public then will do it.

Attaching a FORUM to each
review paper can be a good idea too, I have read many comments in IMECHANICA that
I could not read like them in any book at least in such a short time. Authors
can get feedback of their readers by means of these forums to make better works
in future. (Just like AMAZON books). And many of comments and nice views can add to
main body of review by others who see these comments beneficial.

The wiki-style articles may be more ideal in this time
because of profits researchers gain by publishing ISI papers in well indexed
journals. But wiki-style review papers need not paying so much time for each
person and finally lead to a brilliant document for society. Also authors tend to introduce their works to
public then will work on it.

More data confirming the old system of "peer review" is empiric

Mike Ciavarella — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:51:18 -0400

Check my updates on

My letter of resignation from the board of International Journal of Solids and Structures
http://imechanica.org/node/3210

I ADD SOME CURIOUS STATISTICS ABOUT IJSS AND IntJFAT BOARDS, SUGGESTING THE EDITORS SURPRISINGLY NOT EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RANKING, AND THE REAL SUPERSTARS ARE BELYTSCHO AND SUO FOR IJSS, AND RITCHIE AND MURAKAMI FOR IntJFat. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF "PEERS" THEN WITH SUCH A DILUTED AND DIVERSE RANGE OF PEOPLE IN THE BOARD?

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

WIKINOMICS --- Why traditional papers need to be changed

Mike Ciavarella — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 07:44:26 -0400

I am getting more and more convinced that traditional papers, the review process, the "mafia" that is behind every journal, the profit of publishers, all this NEEDS to be changed.

And is changing. Old Institutes, even Harvard, are of course a good system, especially as they collect HUGE amounts of money. But they correspond to MICROSOFT, EXXON oil, etc. in short, traditional big companies/Institutions. They are slow. And closed circles.

Imechanica, the ideas from Eric, LIQUIDPUB, they are all ideas to renovate this.

We can try create google groups for subjects we like before
embarking into a web site. Maybe the future of a paper is a WEB site. Each paper a web site. That's it. The end of profit of Elsevier and other publishing companies in the 9 Billion business.

Good papers/Web sites will make some money.

Funding will be allocated to people able to create VIRTUAL organizations, not Harvard nor Caltech nor other places who need to deplace people. What about good people in Kazakistan? Why making all the effort to move for a quick idea?

The future is more of
social networks which make revolution by running ligth but with sheer amount
of people -- wikipedia, linux, google, etc.

Read : http://www.wikinomics.com/

What is "Wikinomics"?

In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting
room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by
collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual
funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the
thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these
massive online communities, Wikinomics explains how to prosper in a
world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of
value. Anyone who wants to understand the major forces revolutionizing business
today should consider Wikinomics their survival kit. Find out more >>

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

Leonardo da Vinci the precursor of Publish AND Perish

Mike Ciavarella — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:03:25 -0400

See my other post

Leonardo da Vinci the precursor of Publish AND Perish ---- not Publish OR Perish -- the present model is dead!

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

Not just a review paper

ericmock — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:48:00 -0400

I'm not proposing a single review paper. I'm proposing an entire library of them that can be continually updated. Sounds like a wiki, eh? It's all in the NSF-CDI proposal. See http://dssl.mne.psu.edu/nsfcdi for all the details.

Measures for measures NATURE Vol 444|21/28 December 2006

Mike Ciavarella — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:01:54 -0400

Are some ways of measuring scientific quality better than others? Sune Lehmann, Andrew D. Jackson and
Benny E. Lautrup analyse the reliability of commonly used methods for comparing citation records.

Some interesting extracts

Unfortunately, the potential benefits of
careful citation analyses are overshadowed
by their harmful misuse. Institutions have a
misguided sense of the fairness of decisions
reached by algorithm, and unable to measure
what they want to maximize (quality), institutions
will maximize what they can measure.
Decisions will continue
to be made using measures
of quality that either ignore
citation data entirely (such
as frequency of publication)
or rely on data sets of insufficient
quality.

For their part, scientists should insist that
their institutions disclose their uses of citation
data, making both data and the methods used
for data analysis available for scrutiny. In the
meantime, we shall have to continue to do
things the old-fashioned way and actually read
the papers.

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

PUBLISH AND PERISH: WHY THE CURRENT PUBLICATION AND REVIEW MODEL

Mike Ciavarella — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:47:41 -0400

This was a project funded, by Fabio Casati, formerly at HP, now dean of ICT in Trento, Italy

see also PUBLISH AND PERISH: WHY THE CURRENT PUBLICATIONAND REVIEW MODEL IS KILLING RESEARCH AND WASTING YOUR MONEY

see
http://eprints.biblio.unitn.it/archive/00001086/01/066.pdf

A few first lines:-

The research world, and specifically the academic world, is centered around the notion
of publication as the basic mean to disseminate results, foster interaction among
communities, and achieve international recognition (and career advancement).
Publications are done in conferences or journals, and are usually reviewed by a
committee of experts, also referred as “peers”. Typically, each paper is reviewed by 3 or
4 reviewers. The “best” papers among all the submitted ones are then accepted for
publication in the journal or in the conference proceedings. In the computer science
area, people typically publishes a dozen paper per year, and submit a little more than
that (not all papers are accepted the first time around). Acceptance rates for
conferences are often around 20% or lower1.

There are three drivers behind this model:

1. Disseminate ideas and make them visible. Through publication and review,
papers are made known to colleagues, and the review process is supposed to
ensure that the best papers are more visible, so that researchers know where to
go (good journals and conferences) if they want to read literature on certain
topics. Publications also have legal implications as they “timestamp” work and
ideas.

2. Get credit, recognition. Having papers accepted at prestigious conferences and
journals is a way to prove (in theory) that the work is valuable. This in turn is a
major criterion to determine career advancement.

3. Meeting and networking. Publications and conference participation leads to
exchange of ideas with colleagues, and to networking. Conferences are also very
useful for students to come and learn how the research community operates.
Highly Inefficient Publishing Process. This model is incredibly inefficient under every
perspective, and results in a colossal waste of public funding, and forces researchers
worldwide to waste countless hours that could be devoted to better research (or to have
fun with family and friends). It is a system deeply rooted in the past, oblivious to the
advent of the Web and related new forms of communication, information sharing, social
networking and reputation. Here are some problems with the current state of affairs:

.....

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it

I am not sure why a review paper should be better start ...

Mike Ciavarella — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:49:29 -0400

I would rather start from Wikipedia.

Somebody told me that Elsevier is trying to set his own WIKIPEDIA. Is that true? In that case, is it too late?

Elsevier is really trying hard, who knows if they have any chance to enter the open access as well in time...

michele ciavarella
www.micheleciavarella.it