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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 15-Sep-2025 12:38:14 JST Paul Cantrell

   in reply to

   • Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified:
   • Steve Bellovin

   @SteveBellovin @adamshostack
   This is well said:

   > Today's peer review solves the motivation problem, but not always the competence problem.

   …and it’s unclear to me how removing money from the whole system improves either motivation or competence.

   The op-ed says “redirect the millions from publishers to these systems,” but it seems to me that what they’re proposing will mostly result in institutions just pocketing the savings from publication fees. Something needs to •force• that money into some kind of better system. “Public peer review” in this context just feels like a hand-waving cop-out.

   I say this as somebody who loves open access, agrees that academic publishing is a harmful cartel, and really, really wants an alternative to love. I like where the article is pointing, but can’t (yet) see the destination toward which that pointing leads.

   • Embed this notice
     Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 15-Sep-2025 12:38:15 JST Steve Bellovin

     in reply to

     • Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified:

     @adamshostack The op-ed isn't just calling for no payment for publishing, it's calling for no journals at all, because if you just abolish publication charges, the journal owners will simply charge more for subscriptions, and she doesn't want that, either. Note these near the end: "At Arcadia Science, a biotechnology company, we publish everything immediately, openly. Real peer review happens in public, where any expert can contribute. Our work gets tested, challenged, and built on in real time" and "Alternatives exist: preprint servers, public peer review, data repositories. Redirect the millions from publishers to these systems."
     I've long complained about today's peer review (see, e.g., https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/04336288.pdf, near the end). But I'm not clear on what the alternative is—major papers might get reviewed, but most won't, and readers have no way to judge the merits of reviews that are done. Are they honest or corrupt? Properly reviewing papers is *hard*, and there are so many papers written that it's impossible to keep up with all of the ones that aren't obviously of great significance if correct. You were at Usenix Security last month, which had 490 members on the program committee. (By contract, my first program committee, in 1984, was *4*, plus two co-chairs…) Even so, you often get unqualified reviewers. (I just got back reviews for a paper where all of the reviewers indicated "some familiarity" with the subject—none of them are experts, but they control if this paper will appear in that venue.)
     In a sense, it's the same as the open source problem: you need many eyes, but they have to be competent and motivated. Today's peer review solves the motivation problem, but not always the competence problem. I won't even go into the problem of making sure that links survive when some volunteer gets tired of running an archive.
     This is a hard problem and I don't pretend to know the answer. But let's be clear on that that op-ed is really saying.

   • Embed this notice
     Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified: (adamshostack@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 15-Sep-2025 12:38:16 JST Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified:

     Hey open #science people is this a good position? https://bsky.app/profile/pracheeac.bsky.social/post/3lytfocs7vs2g. I’m generally a fan of no funds to journals, but also there’s real costs to running a journal and archive and someone has to pay it.

     As someone who does science but doesn’t always qualify for funding for open access, I get that there’s both complexity and that complexity is used as justification for crazy fees and profit.