this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
1000 points (98.9% liked)

Science Memes

11086 readers
2707 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1000
Elsevier (mander.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
164 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If we build a decentralized system for paper publishing, like lemmy based on activitypub.. will it work?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Probably won't take off because scientists need reputable journals and not some random fediverse publishers.

Is it fucked up? Absolutely. But something else needs to be changed before this would be possible.

Also, why not ditch the concept of a "publisher" to begin with? Why not have a national or international article index, graded by the article level? It's not that we live in a paper era, and for those who still need it, we can always print.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, a decentralized platform would only make an index and universities or institutions can maintain their own instances

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

This I generally approve, if availability is good enough

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, we could assign the reviewers more "significance" here. We could give them points and if they "upvote" a paper it gives the paper a bit more visibility/reputation. If the reviewer has actually reviewed the paper it gives the paper more points.

How much a reviewer is able to "spend" could be based on the reputation of the institution, their own papers in the same field and the points they get for their reviews by other users.

Just a raw idea,but it seems possible, indeed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Interesting concept for an open collaboration!

Should also address the misuse of the points when some large researcher doesn't care to peer review and may give power to someone else, or hacking leading to spending of points, or whatever threats there can be

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Institutions could easily form their own journals. National organizations that provide grants could also require you to publish in their journal. Universities can run their own journals. These sorts of entities already exist and provide article access for free, publishing in them would just need to be normalized.

These are just a few options without researchers organizing anything for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fair enough, though why should journals even be a thing? Why not just university publishing papers online as soon as they are accepted?

Currently we already have this thing with some journals publishing online the articles that are meant for future issues, which fucks up citations quite a bit. Why not just ditch the entire "journal" format altogether?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I was kind of thinking of that with the institutional journal bit. It doesn't need to be a traditional journal, the only things important to me are:

  1. peer review (skip #2)

  2. open access

  3. professional editors to help improve phrasing, spelling, flow, etc.

  4. DOI link or similar unique identifier

I'm totally down to ditch the traditional journal format otherwise. It was just a quick comment not meant to go in-depth, but point out that we already have public institutions that can host publications.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Ah, this I can agree with :)