Re: [tlug] Journals, Authors and 'Free Peer Review'

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Sunday, September 30, 2018 01:19 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull 
wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>
>   > Oh...  If you're alluding to plagiarism or some other
>   > suspicious behaviour, then yes, you're correct.
> No, I wasn't.  I'm talking about "honest" research that is published
> in non-refereed venues (including pay-to-publish venues that claim to
> have referees).


(Looking back at my previous message...)  We were 
hypothetically talking about me being a referee and looking 
at some paper which has not cited an ArXiv paper.  Do I 
point it out to the author?

I'm not sure if I would ever point out to an author about 
not citing non-peer-reviewed work.  In some areas (i.e., 
life sciences), there are oral presentations that are really 
just abstracts with a possible poster session.  They may 
have some good ideas, but I would never ask an author to 
cite such work.  Indeed, I would (personally) lump ArXiv 
together with them.

But maybe that might change but you're asking for my opinion 
right now.


>   > I guess what I mean is if someone searched their digital
>   > libraries of choice for their discipline and didn't turn up
>   > anything.  i.e., ACM and IEEE's digital libraries.  Is that
>   > enough?
>
> That depends on the purpose of the search.  If you're looking for
> reason to believe your work is not duplicative of someone else's, no,
> that's not good enough.  One of my sempai was a year into data
> collection for his dissertation, when somebody independently published
> something very similar to what he planned for his chapters 2 and 3 (in
> the elsewhere-mentioned American Economic Review, no less).  One
> suspects that preprints were available much earlier if he had only
> known where to look (the AER had an acceptance to print lag of about 6
> months, and a submission to acceptance lag of 6 to 24 months).  I'm
> not sure why his advisor didn't know about it.


Alas, advisors aren't Gods.  They can and sometimes do miss 
things.  I do recall a story where a student worked on 
his/her PhD dissertation for 2 years and then something came 
out that disputed the whole hypothesis.  That student ended 
up quitting.  (This is one of those someone told someone who 
told me...not sure how reliable is this story.)

But, these things happens.  There are no certainties in 
research just as there aren't any in business, either.


> If you're doing a survey article on the current state of the art,
> that's probably good enough.
>
> If you're doing an original research paper where you've pretty much
> completed the work, you should already have a sufficiently detailed
> bibliography based on the purposes above, except it's worth doing a
> lookup for new work citing the papers in your bibliography.


That is certainly true.

As I perhaps mentioned in a separate e-mail, if you've 
specialized, you probably know everyone in the field.  (Or 
everyone and all of their past and current students :-) ). 
But someone does sometimes come out of nowhere and surprises 
everyone.  Of course, this can be a good thing, depending on 
one's point of view...the good, at least, is that a research 
area isn't "closed"; anyone can get in if you do the 
background work to enter it.


>   > Mentioning them isn't the hard part.  Trusting it is.  Or,
>   > more precisely, trusting it enough to cite it is.
> I don't see how you can have rules for that.  If my search turned up
> more ArXiv articles than I had time to read, I'd see if there were any
> titles that grabbed my eye and dig a little deeper (read abstracts or
> so).  If it was only a couple in the last two years, I'd read them and
> decide.  That's what it means to be a professional researcher to me
> (although as I mentioned elsewhere stuff I work on has the half-life
> of a proton :-þ).


I don't think it's a rule but one does have to have a 
filter.  I wish we had the time to read everything in our 
field, but we don't.


>   > They do give weight to citations but the weight for something like
>   > ArXiv will be a 0.  [Disclaimer: No, I haven't asked.]
> Sure.  The effect I, and I'm pretty sure Benjamin, am thinking about
> is more indirect.  People will see your ArXiv article, and more
> important it may be an URL that's easier to remember or consider
> "important".  Knowing your name from reading it, they may look for
> your other, more reputable, publications, especially any in the
> bibliography.  The argument is that an ArXiv listing is real cheap, a
> few seconds to upload.  The potential upside is huge, although
> probably not realized very often (I mentioned 1000000:1 before :-).
...
>   > In fact, I probably would put it together with non-peer-reviewed
>   > publications, including those manuscripts that we might put in a CV
>   > or year-end report as "in preparation".
>
> Right.  As long as ArXiv isn't below those, why not?  That's what I
> (and again I think Benjamin too) are arguing.  Might even convince a
> non-technical university-level committee your c.v. is longer than it
> looks. :-)


Again, I don't have anything against ArXiv.  I have no 
intention of changing your's or Benjamin's opinions about 
it.  But this thread started (I think) because of my reply 
to Benjamin's suggesting that it is really great.  I don't 
agree with that and I think it's worth saying why.

While our opinions won't change, for anyone who is still 
following this thread, at least they can see two sides.

So, "why not?", you ask.  So, let me cheat and go into that 
survey.  113/159 of respondents said they've never submitted 
their work to pre-print servers (Figure 10).  As for their 
reasons, they include:

1)  don't see a need when they intend to publish their work 
anyway (25%)
2)  don't want to give away ideas too early (14%)
3)  want to preserve the integrity of double-blind reviewing 
(26%)

I picked and chose the reasons.  (And I didn't read the 
whole survey...I'm jumping around the PDF so sorry if the 
numbers are wrong.)

Personally, I think these are all legitimate reasons, even 
the ones that I didn't single out above.  In particular, #2 
is actually a good reason that I didn't think about -- being 
scooped.  There have been cases of reviewers scooping the 
papers they reviewed...totally unethical but it happens. 
Placing it in a preprint server is going to make this "worse".

Someone beating another to publication can make what would 
have been a tier 1 publication to a tier 2 or tier 3.  Even 
if they cite the ArXiv version, it doesn't matter.  They 
would be a tier 1 publication can mine would be a lower 
tier.  And that could mean a huge difference in terms of 
continued funding, salaries and support for students and 
staff, etc.  Submitting it to a preprint server just to make 
a statement against a publisher isn't something I would be 
in favour of.

And speaking of the publisher, I don't really think they are 
that evil.  Yes, they are expensive.  But if it's an open 
access publication charge, then it has been included in the 
project's budget.  And it's actually a small portion 
compared to the cost of running the research project itself. 
 It's probably worth nitpicking when we're running out of 
money at the end...  As for accessing the journals, the 
library does pay for it; again, it's part of their budget. 
And they don't pay for a journal for "me"; but for the whole 
university and even upper-year undergraduates may use it. 
For those who aren't in research, access is expensive, but 
there might be ways...for example, one could join that 
alumni association which *sometimes* includes library access.

As for peer review, I actually don't see it as being a slave 
to the publisher.  I think it's part of research -- that you 
conduct research, write it up, and submit it.  And 
sometimes, the tables are turned and you have to act as a 
peer reviewer.  Assuming a paper has 3 reviewers (on 
average), then, roughly speaking, for each paper you submit, 
you should review 3 times [yes, divided by the number of 
co-authors...you know what I mean ;-) ].  It's quite 
ok...and while most papers I've seen make my eyes roll, 
there are times when something appears and I think "Wow! 
I'm glad I read that.  I'm going to offer some suggestions 
to the authors to help make it better."  Never once did I 
ever think that I'm doing this for the publisher.  So, it 
was interesting to have heard that in this thread.

And I have said "No" to publishers before.  I think as long 
as one has a reason and tell them soon, it is quite ok.  Of 
course, if I said "No" to them 10 times and then submit 2 
papers that means I am asking the editor to find 6 reviewers 
for me, then I guess I deserve to have the editor make a 
voodoo doll of me with pins all over...

Anyway, that's a long-winded answer to your "Why not?".  At 
least for me, the "Why not" out-weighs the "Why".

Ray