Monday, September 19, 2016

SciPost is a great initiative towards restoring science to journals

"SciPost is a a complete scientific publication portal managed by active professional scientists."

It is worth checking out.
SciPost addresses many concerns I have about the current sorry state of science and publishing. These include that journals becoming redundant and counter productive and so we need alternative publication models, particularly not involving for-profit companies.

One thing I particularly like is the transparency. All the referee reports are public and referees have the option of being anonymous or not. Furthermore, anyone can write a report. Authors responses to the reports are also public.
I think this public accountability may raise standards significantly.

I hope you (and I) will consider supporting it by
-  submitting articles
- writing referee reports (either on request or volunteering)
- writing commentaries
- being willing to serve on the Editorial College

Jean-Sebastien Caux is to be commended for all the work he has put into this.
I thank Matt Davis for bringing this significant initiative to my attention.

2 comments:

  1. Looks great. Thanks Ross and Matt

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think SciPost may improve a lot by looking to the way that elife is run.

    ReplyDelete

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