arivero
2004 June 15th, 11:05
Hello,
After some limited experience in both sides of the peer review system during the last year, I have been thinking a bit about the problem to communicate new ideas. I would like to discuss how a journal of physics could be oriented to work with half-baked or simply unfinished research.
The problem I see with current journals is that they have accepted that communication is done via meetings, while journals simply archive and qualify the finished research. In this role, journal editors ask for *finished* research and then they evaluate the quality according journal standards.
Just lowering the bar does not work very well. This was perhaps the point of view adopted for by \"International Journal of Theoretical Physics\" (2002 impact factor 0.655, Immediacy Index 0.112), and perhaps recently by \"Physics Letters A\" (1.483, 0.264). A close method was to believe on the existence of a separate research field, perhaps the spirit of \"Foundations of Physics\" (0.443, 0.086) and \"Foundations of Physics Letters\" (0.495, 0.000). The immediacy index show that these approaches are not adequate if the authors want to get some feedback; surely even a webpage does it better.
A idea I am pondering about is to have a journal which publishes jointly the article, the author cover letter -explaining what is new there etc-, and at least two referee comments about the research. In the cover letter the author could explain if he is keeping with this work, or why he is unable to follow towards a standard finished publication. The referees, even staying anonymous, could make suggestions for future progress. And even double blind can be provided in publication, if the author does not wish to risk a more professional career.
Perhaps referees should be paid in order to get them to dedicate time to the report. I am unsure here.
Of course the big worry about such journal is crackpot input. I can imagine two ways to stop this flow. On one side, license transfer should let the journal to publish both the submitted -and rejected- job and the referee criticisms openly in a separate section, or perhaps in a website with limited right of reply. Secondly, from my net experience, I\'d say that people on circle quadrature are basically single-idea guys. Thus by requesting them to justify what is new respect to previous presentations, they can be easily controlled. Am I being too optimistic?
Alejandro Rivero
After some limited experience in both sides of the peer review system during the last year, I have been thinking a bit about the problem to communicate new ideas. I would like to discuss how a journal of physics could be oriented to work with half-baked or simply unfinished research.
The problem I see with current journals is that they have accepted that communication is done via meetings, while journals simply archive and qualify the finished research. In this role, journal editors ask for *finished* research and then they evaluate the quality according journal standards.
Just lowering the bar does not work very well. This was perhaps the point of view adopted for by \"International Journal of Theoretical Physics\" (2002 impact factor 0.655, Immediacy Index 0.112), and perhaps recently by \"Physics Letters A\" (1.483, 0.264). A close method was to believe on the existence of a separate research field, perhaps the spirit of \"Foundations of Physics\" (0.443, 0.086) and \"Foundations of Physics Letters\" (0.495, 0.000). The immediacy index show that these approaches are not adequate if the authors want to get some feedback; surely even a webpage does it better.
A idea I am pondering about is to have a journal which publishes jointly the article, the author cover letter -explaining what is new there etc-, and at least two referee comments about the research. In the cover letter the author could explain if he is keeping with this work, or why he is unable to follow towards a standard finished publication. The referees, even staying anonymous, could make suggestions for future progress. And even double blind can be provided in publication, if the author does not wish to risk a more professional career.
Perhaps referees should be paid in order to get them to dedicate time to the report. I am unsure here.
Of course the big worry about such journal is crackpot input. I can imagine two ways to stop this flow. On one side, license transfer should let the journal to publish both the submitted -and rejected- job and the referee criticisms openly in a separate section, or perhaps in a website with limited right of reply. Secondly, from my net experience, I\'d say that people on circle quadrature are basically single-idea guys. Thus by requesting them to justify what is new respect to previous presentations, they can be easily controlled. Am I being too optimistic?
Alejandro Rivero