As announced on FriendFeed and Twitter, a writing collaboration between me and the inimitable Cameron Neylon has just been published at PLoS Biology, “Article-level metrics and the evolution of scientific impact”! (Loosely based on a blog post from several months ago.)
One of the many issues Cameron and I touched on was the problem of commenting. Most people probably aren’t aware of the problem; after all, commenting is alive and well on the internet in most places you look! But click over to PLoS or BioMed Central (BMC) and the comment sections are the digital equivalent of rolling tumbleweed.
As we mention briefly in the article, comments have great potential for improving science. For one thing, they’re a form of peer review, but without the month-long wait and seemingly arbitrary review criteria. Readers, authors, and other evaluators can also get a sense of what people think about the article. The ideal is certainly tantalizing — vigorous, rigorous debates over the finer scientific points as well as the overarching conclusions with participation both from experts in the field as well as informed laypeople, always with intelligence and civility!!!1!11!!one!! But let’s not kid ourselves — the worst-case scenario is all too easy to imagine and would probably look something like the discussions over at YouTube.
And this would be positively urbane. (From PhD comics)
A brief analysis of commenting at BMC, PLoS, and BMJ
November 18, 2009 7 Comments
As announced on FriendFeed and Twitter, a writing collaboration between me and the inimitable Cameron Neylon has just been published at PLoS Biology, “Article-level metrics and the evolution of scientific impact”! (Loosely based on a blog post from several months ago.)
One of the many issues Cameron and I touched on was the problem of commenting. Most people probably aren’t aware of the problem; after all, commenting is alive and well on the internet in most places you look! But click over to PLoS or BioMed Central (BMC) and the comment sections are the digital equivalent of rolling tumbleweed.
As we mention briefly in the article, comments have great potential for improving science. For one thing, they’re a form of peer review, but without the month-long wait and seemingly arbitrary review criteria. Readers, authors, and other evaluators can also get a sense of what people think about the article. The ideal is certainly tantalizing — vigorous, rigorous debates over the finer scientific points as well as the overarching conclusions with participation both from experts in the field as well as informed laypeople, always with intelligence and civility!!!1!11!!one!! But let’s not kid ourselves — the worst-case scenario is all too easy to imagine and would probably look something like the discussions over at YouTube.
And this would be positively urbane. (From PhD comics)
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Filed under Academia, Open science Tagged with biomed central, bmj, commenting, PLoS, publishing, science communication