123: Authenticated anonymity (with Michael Eisen)

Episode 123 · January 4th, 2021 · 53 mins 49 secs

About this Episode

Part two of our chat with Michael Eisen (eLife Editor-in-Cheif), in which we discuss the pros and cons of collaborative peer review, journal submission interfaces, Michael's take on James' proposal that peer reviewers should be paid $450 dollars, why negative comments on peer reviews need to be normalised, plus much more.

Some more details:

  • The pros and cons of collaborative peer review (in which all peer reviewers discuss the paper after all individual peer reviews have been submitted
  • How technology can constrain journal operations
  • The strange engineered delay in paper reviews (I doesn't take 2-3 weeks to review a paper)
  • Michael's proposal for a system in which people can nominate they have time in the near future to review a paper and then papers can be sent to them so they're rapidly reviewed
  • Journal submission interfaces
  • Michael's take on paying peer reviewers
  • Who owns peer reviews?
  • Would negative (anonomous or not) comments on an open peer review report penalise authors in the future?
  • Every paper gets negative peer-review comments, this doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad paper
  • Michael proposes an explicit "speculation" section for papers, where authors get free reign to basically say whatever they want

Other links

Music credits: [Lee Rosevere](freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/)


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