In our world of science there are always two main goals, get
papers and then get grants. In order for those to happen you have to start with
a base of good experiments, including new ideas, great experimental design and
significant results. But there is always a battle to get into the best journal,
the one with prestige, the one that will get your name out into the science
world. In order to do that we must appease the reviewers, those anonymous peers
whose job is to judge and critique your work. The system is made to prevent
fraud and produce the best possible scientific research, but is the best
science always published in the best journals?
There is always an inherent bias in the publications of papers.
The more data that you have, the more famous your lab is, the fancier the
techniques, the more likely your work is to be published in a higher tier
journal. I am not saying that any of that science is not worthy, because it is
truly amazing, but the competition that there is to get into better journals is
a part of life in this career. Often times there are beautiful experiments and
amazing results in smaller journals and how can science be pure and fair if we
are fighting for the fame of a high tier journal. Shouldn’t the goal be to
produce the results that are accurate and advancing your field?
The new website PubPeer wants to
change the world of science publication, to start an anonymous conversation.
This would allow for a type of worldwide journal club. Even though this still
occurs after the publication of papers imagine being able to discuss the worlds
best papers with talented scientists all over the world. Even though this doesn’t
remove the inherent bias of the publication process it may add a new dimension
by allowing for a more global discussion and may lead to less fraud in the long
term. Personally, hearing other researchers’ opinions of papers at journal club
has always helped me to look at both others and my own work more critically. The
Pubpeer discussion that is available for the world to see could add an extra
level of review, this time not chosen by a journal but the actual scientific
community, the very same people who are reading the papers we are all trying to
publish.
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