Great news: “From next year, eLife is eliminating accept/reject decisions after peer review, instead focusing on public reviews and assessments of preprints.”

Valentin Amrhein points to this new policy from a biology journal. Here it is: From next year, we will no longer make accept/reject decisions at the end of the peer-review process; rather, all papers that have been peer-reviewed will be … Continue reading

“I don’t want ‘crowd peer review’ or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It’s just too burdensome and I’d rather have a more formal peer review process.”

Nothing new here, I just happened to come across this post from a couple years ago and I think it remains relevant: I understand the above quote completely. Life would be so much simpler if my work was just reviewed … Continue reading

“I don’t want ‘crowd peer review’ or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It’s just too burdensome and I’d rather have a more formal peer review process.”

I understand the above quote completely. Life would be so much simpler if my work was just reviewed by my personal friends and by people whose careers are tied to mine. Sure, they’d point out problems, but they’d do it … Continue reading

The puzzle: Why do scientists typically respond to legitimate scientific criticism in an angry, defensive, closed, non-scientific way? The answer: We’re trained to do this during the process of responding to peer review.

[image of Cantor’s corner] Here’s the “puzzle,” as we say in social science. Scientific research is all about discovery of the unexpected: to do research, you need to be open to new possibilities, to design experiments to force anomalies, and … Continue reading