200% agree with this entire thread. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

anshulkundaje.bsky.social • 90 days ago

200% agree with this entire thread.

Kudos to NIH for getting rid of the odious 12 month delay in public access (a capitulation to the demands of scientific societies). But, as the new policy assumes grantees will continue to publish their work in traditional scientific journals, it remains unacceptable.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

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timtriche.bsky.social•90 days ago

How are dinosaurs supposed to gatekeep without journals?

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•90 days ago

It is far easier to rattle of a list of things wrong with the current system than to replace it with something better. I'm old enough to have sat in a room > 20 years ago, listening to @mbeisen.bsky.social explaining, after his scientific seminar, how open access was THE thing that was going to 1/n

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•90 days ago

fix scientific publishing. That having to pay for subscriptions was the main thing making science inequitable. How the PLoS initiative was setting an example of how to make the world a better place. And I believed every single word of it. It was OBVIOUS that paying for the science twice was 2/n

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•90 days ago

ridiculous and open access was clearly THE SOLUTION. Now, 20+ years later, I actually have quite ambiguous feelings about what open access has done. Because, in retrospect it seems also obvious that this would create a niche for predatory journals that publish ANYTHING as long as you give them 3/n

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•90 days ago

some money. Which, together with idiot administrators counting publications, has led to an explosion of bullshit journals that take money to publish crap that nobody wants to read. Ever. How's that for wasting money? And the 'good' journals can charge obscene amounts to publish in them. That too 4/n

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•90 days ago

is a consequence of the demand for open access instead of a subscription model. And then there are more subtle consequences, like big shot journals (eg. Nature, Science) creating a second tier of journals where they allow papers rejected from the top tier to be published for a big fee. I suspect 5/n

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•90 days ago

these journals now purposefully let a larger number of manuscripts go through review and revision at the top tier. Holding publication in the top tier up as a carrot. And hold off the decision as to whether to allow publication in the top tier until review/revision is basically done. When they 6/n

maewoods.bsky.social•90 days ago

20 years is relatively short compared to the history of science & in relation to DEI, people working on problems that bridge scientific disciplines would not have had ample opportunity to publish & have work peer reviewed (esp. in the mathematical sciences in relation to combo) without integration.

maewoods.bsky.social•90 days ago

Integration, with regard to the popularization of open source science. This has an impact in healthcare and clinical research because the more experts that society supports, who are trained and able to write research proposals, the more trials can be supported globally.

shoaclarke.bsky.social•90 days ago

I mostly agree w/ @mbeisen.bsky.social & support his efforts to change academic publishing & try new things. But I push back against completely dismissing organized peer review. Many probs but often has value. And value may differ for different fields/contexts (eg clinical vs basic science research)

anshulkundaje.bsky.social•90 days ago

Yes I think organized review is important too. However, it should absolutely not be used for arbitrary gate keeping + should be far more than 3 reviewers and an editor who end up having extreme power to gate keep.

anshulkundaje.bsky.social•90 days ago

Also publications as frozen static entities is crazy. Version control is critical but there has to be easy ways to update science in response to legitimate reviews, comments & improvements made by the authors.

mbeisen.bsky.social•90 days ago

I don’t completely dismiss organized peer review - I dismiss its singular role in todays science and the way our reverence for it suppresses alternatives

maewoods.bsky.social•89 days ago

But you do post on x

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