The R2R debate, part 1: opening statement in support | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

"This Monday and Tuesday, I was at the R2R (Researcher to Reader) conference at BMA House in London. It’s the first time I’ve been to this, and I was there at the invitation of my old sparring partner Rick Anderson, who was organizing this year’s debate, on the proposition “The venue of its publication tells us nothing useful about the quality of a paper”.

I was one half of the team arguing in favour of the proposition, along with Toby Green, currently managing director at Coherent Digital and prevously head of publishing at the OECD for twenty years. Our opponents were Pippa Smart, publishing consultant and editor of Learned Publishing; and Niall Boyce, editor of The Lancet Psychiatry.

I’m going to blog three of the four statements that were made. (The fourth, that of Niall Boyce, is not available, as he spoke from handwritten notes.) I’ll finish this series with a fourth post summarising how the debate went, and discussing what I now think about the proposition...."