A Future for Scientific Discourse

Alex Bäcker

September 2004

Computation, Computers, Information and Mathematics Center, Sandia National Laboratories*, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185

and

California Institute of Technology, MC 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125

The future of scientific publishing is the subject of intense debate both in government, academic and industry circles these days (Nature 431, 111 (2004)). The introduction late last week of a Beta release of Google Scholar, a freely available search engine for the scientific literature, makes the issue as topical as ever –articles in non-peer-reviewed archives, such as arXiv, stand side-by-side with those in peer-reviewed journals. Is this a democratization of science under way? Or is it a loathsome drop in the standards? I make the case here that the current peer review and scientific publishing system is obsolete. Below, I explain why, review alternative systems that have emerged recently and their own problems, propose a new emerging paradigm of scientific publication and validation, and discuss some of its potential advantages.

Roles of scientific publishing and peer review

There is no doubt that scientific publishing and peer review serve a crucial function in today’s scientific community. These functions include:

1. distinction of good science from nonsense;
2. prioritization, ranking or selection of the “most important” science that “deserves” to be published in highly read journals;
3. feedback about a piece of scientific work to its authors from their colleagues, sometimes resulting in an improvement of the work;
4. segmentation of the scientific literature into clusters more or less aligned with the interests of specific scientific communities;
5. dissemination of scientific work in an enduring and citable way;
6. evaluation of the work of research scientists for purposes of tenure, promotion, etc.

Problems with the traditional system of science dissemination

Problems with the current system of publication and peer review have long been known to exist. These problems include:

1. the peer doing the reviewing is often a competitor for the same resources, presenting a conflict of interest;
2. “one size fits all” rankings of scientific work cannot be as useful as rankings customized for an individual scientist;
3. review in a limited period of time by a small number of anonymous scientists who are not compensated leads to frequent imperfections and delays;
4. reliance on a few “experts” introduces a bias against revolutionary science and for incremental additions to the current paradigm;
5. the cumbersome nature of the process leaves substantial amounts of potentially useful scientific knowledge unpublished;
6. the duration of the process delays the dissemination of scientific results, delaying progress;
7. classification into one field is often futile for interdisciplinary work and can withhold results from potential audiences;
8. the growing size of literature makes it difficult for scientists to keep abreast of relevant developments;
9. the high and growing costs of subscriptions makes science less universally accessible;
10. the static nature of paper journals makes it difficult to keep results updated with errata.

Alternative science dissemination models

Open-access journals have emerged to address availability, but are still subject to the perils of peer review. Public archives like arXiv allow fast dissemination, but do not solve all issues regarding evaluation and have not been universally adopted across all disciplines. EPrints is dedicated to self-archiving, yet even they generally maintain that peer-reviewed publication is the standard.