Hot Topics in Open Access: Peer Review and the Tyranny That Must be Broken | Forskarbloggen

" ... The first one posted by Richard Price (The founder and CEO at Academia.edu) brings focus to the need to change and expand the number of scientist reviewing an academic work. He argues that in the traditional peer review process with only two or three scientists reviewing one paper places too much weight on what such a small number of scientists think. Another of his arguments comes from biomedical companies who claim that majority of peer review articles within their subject area are not reproducible! Richard Price has acquired Plasmyd to Academia.edu. It is one effort to develop new ways of quality assessment in scholarly communication.  What he actually is saying is: involve modern existing open technology in peer review process to be better able to weed out the non-reproducing research results in scientific communication. Richard Price is initiated, his argumentation is worth considering – and debating ... The other feature, by now even more debated than peer reviewing process, is the issue raised by Randy Schekman, a Nobel Prize winner 2013. According to him, 'leading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a 'tyranny' that must be broken'. He declares war and boycott to the top-tier journals and has himself seen to that his lab no longer sends papers to them, Nature, Cell and Science included.   Randy Schekman draws parallels with corrupting effects of bonus system in a banking sector and with fashion industry where limited editions are created to stoke demand. At the same way the top tier journals restrict the number of articles they accept for publishing. The exclusivity is then marketed with a gimmick called impact factor- says Schekman and continues to argue that this has distorting influence to science: 'It builds bubbles in fashionable fields where researchers can make the bold claims these journals want, while discouraging other important work, such as replication studies…”