Nick, What a great idea. Makes reviewing like recommending, and it gives potential readers a better sense of why someone liked or disliked an article. It really changes the nature of a journal. Rather than selectively publishing only the well reviewed articles, everything would be published along with their reviews. The value of a journal would even more depend on the people they could get to do the reviewing.
It would make it more difficult to list one's "publications," though. Under what circumstances would one say that a submitted paper had been accepted and published? I guess the journal could still go through its acceptance process. A problem that occurs to me, though, is that often one submits an article with the hope of getting useful comments and with the expectation of having to re-write it. How would those articles be handled? Would the author accompanying the submission with a request not to have the article and the reviews made public? Also, I suspect that some reviewers would not want their entire reviews published online. At least a portion of each review would have to be set aside for the author only. The more I think about it, the more complex but also the more promising it becomes. A very interesting idea. -- Russ On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Glen, > > OK, but .... No matter how many dimensions of judgment you have, it all > boils down to a one-bit decision: either you are going to read the sucker > or you arent. > > If one knows who the reviewers are ... knows their tastes, ete, perhaps > each consumer could rate reviewers and the program could give a stars by > reviewer-weighting customized for each consumer. Software could be > provided to do this. Very close to what Amazon provides right now, except > that each reader could accumulate his own personal judgments of reviewers, > rather than relying on swarm evaluation. > > I forgot to say: Let's say the journal has an editorial board that rates > and comments on articles as they are submitted. Let;s say we start a > journal called THE FRIAM JOURNAL OF APPLIED COMPLEXITY. Every article is > sent out to five reviewers. So now we have a possiblity of 25 stars, say. > Now, the editor passes along the ratings and suggestions of the readers > and the author now can make choice. He can carry on publication with a low > rating, or he can revise and resubmit to get a better rating. > > this led to another thought. A group such as this one wouldnt need even to > start its own journal. It could just start a rating service of some other > publication. We could, for instance, start by rating JASSS and putting the > ratings up on the web. The trouble is we wouldnt be rating or seeing the > articles that JASSS had rejected. I suppose we could ask JASSS to send us > all their rejected articles! > > I am probably too lazy to do anything like this, but I really like thinking > about it. > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) > > > > > > [Original Message] > > From: glen e. p. ropella <g...@agent-based-modeling.com> > > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > > Date: 1/29/2009 12:44:00 PM > > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review > > > > Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 28/01/09 07:34 PM: > > > [...] why not > > > have every article published and every article rated by a number of > stars, > > > and then everybody could set their browser to the minimum number of > stars > > > we are willing to tolerate. Those of us who don't want to be subject > to > > > the "peer review" effect, could simply set their browser to read > everything > > > with any stars at all! > > > > The problem with this is that a number of stars is uni-dimensional, > > while the guidelines for reviewers for any given publication are > > multi-dimensional (and/or vague). > > > > You could still project down to one dimension if you have a strong > > policy of who gets to rate the article, what the criteria are for the > > rating, and the trump power of the editor's opinion. > > > > The ultimate automation would be a multi-dimensional rating measure, > > though. Then you might be able to get rid of the per-publication > > policies. I'm imagining a preference- (or query-) controlled modal > > 5-dimensional 3D space with color and animation. Oooo, we could also > > implement an automated-profiling-controlled physics for the 5D system so > > that articles were, say, attracted to you based on your past interests, > > more elastic where clusters of articles cover much of the same content, > > coefficients of friction were adjusted based on which region of rating > > space you were exploring at the time, colors (of the articles) change > > when your focus shifts from fact to speculation or physics to > > philosophy, etc. > > > > ... or not. > > > > -- > > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
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