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\begin{document}

\title{Alberto Pepe on Quality Control (AMA)}


 \author{The Authorea Team}


\date{}

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On September 15th, 2016 Authorea CEO and Cofounder, Alberto Pepe,
encouraged the Reddit science community to ask him anything. Below are a
few excerpts from the AMA on the topic of~\textbf{quality control}~in
scientific
publishing.~\href{https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/52vtf7/im_alberto_pepe_the_guy_challenging_elsevier_im/?st=itn51yxd\&sh=782b8bb5}{Click
here for the full thread}.\\



Read~\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/96042/articles/130316/_show_article}{general
AMA excerpts here}~or specific discussions on the topic
of~\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/96042/articles/130438/_show_article}{metrics/ranking/impact}~or~\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/96042/articles/130437/_show_article}{Authorea's
business model}.\\\selectlanguage{english}
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\href{https://www.reddit.com/user/captainpotty}{captainpotty}

Hi Alberto,\\

I'm interested in understanding where the quality-control is going to
come from. The current quality control system is broken--an overworked
editor and 2-3 reviewers who all have shit to do other than volunteer
their time to nitpick a paper skim it and write the first thing that
comes to mind--but I'd like to know if you have a better system for
quality assurance of research in mind.\\

There are thousands of manuscripts published each day. And that doesn't
account for the millions of null-result papers sitting in desk drawers,
or the millions of papers with less-than-rigorous research methods. How
does a system like this assure readers of the quality of the work they
are accessing?\\

\begin{quote}
\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/3}{Alberto\_Pepe}\\

Co-Founder \textbar{} Authorea\\

Hey captainpotty- Authorea currently has a very ``light'' review system,
which means that you can simply comment on specific sections of a paper.
We built this commenting/annotation system mostly for authors so that
they could discuss with their coauthors (privately or publicly). One
day, however, we noticed that an Authorea user who had just finished the
final draft of a climate science paper,~\textbf{before}~sending it to a
journal,~\href{https://twitter.com/el_nino_waves/status/588483628465840128}{posted
the link to it on Twitter, saying: ``Now open for comments''}. He and
his coauthors
collected~\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/17200/articles/19163/_show_article}{60+
public comments (plus many other private ones)}~from the public (signed
in authors as well as non-signed in anonymous). That was an example
of~\textbf{open pre-publication peer review}, or: you let anyone review
your work before it is even submitted to a journal. The authors told us
that they the final manuscript they ended up submitting was a lot
stronger because it had already been reviewed! (and by more than 2-3
reviewers)\\

I understand that a major concern for this sort of system would be
assuring the highest quality of the review mechanism. It does sound
scary to open up the scholarly reviewing mechanism - which is by and
large the filter that separates science from non-science. The truth is:
the peer review mechanism is far from perfect. It has many many many
problems today. What we propose (not today, but in the near future) is a
``karma'' system" (similar to reddit) whereby your contribution and
reputation as an open peer-reviewer can be voted upon. I understand that
such a system could be gamed. It is not without problems, but if it
existed in addition to the current (problematic) closed peer review
system, I think it would overall be a more rigorous and better reviewing
system.\\

Read the
\href{https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/52vtf7/im_alberto_pepe_the_guy_challenging_elsevier_im/d7nrooc}{full
conversation on r/science here}.\\
\end{quote}

\href{https://www.reddit.com/user/p1percub}{p1percub}

Professor \textbar{} Human Genetics \textbar{} Computational Trait
Analysis~

\par\null

The nearly-non-existant peer review process that many open science
journals perform doesn't seem to do much to keep out trash science.\\

How do you think these platforms can evolve to limit the exposure and
credibility given to pseudoscience? These papers can be particularly
damaging when ``research'' driven by a politcal agenda is published
(along the lines of the racist pseudoscience
``journal''~\href{http://openpsych.net/OBG/}{Open Behavioral Genetics}).
It can be very difficult for lay audiences to differentiate quality
research from intellectually dishonest, agenda-driven pseudoscience in
the absense of careful expert review. How does your platform work to
manage this risk?\\

\begin{quote}
\href{https://www.reddit.com/user/Alberto_Pepe}{}\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/3}{Alberto\_Pepe}\\

Co-Founder \textbar{} Authorea\\

Hi p1percub. This is a great question, and one of definite validity. It
is also a hard question to answer and while I don't have the full
solution, there are some aspects that seem already clear imho on how we
can build a better Peer Review 2.0.\\

\begin{enumerate}
\tightlist
\item
  \textbf{Reviews need to have increased transparency.}~Not necessarily
  by moving away from ``blind'' reviews, but at the very least the
  review's text needs to be made part of the accepted proceedings. In
  other words, peers should be rewarded for their reviews. In a system
  that works properly, peer reviews are just as important as the
  reviewed papers.\\[3\baselineskip]
\item
  \textbf{Post-proceeding reviews may allow for the retroactive up- or
  downgrade correction of inaccurate proceeding reviews.}~Since we love
  to say hindsight is 20-20, the publishing process should allow to
  explicitly annotate papers with newly acquired knowledge years after
  they are accepted. We think that this is not unscientific, in fact it
  is the most scientific thing there is. We recently wrote a post
  listing~\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/126854/_show_article}{11
  courageous retractions in science}. Overall, a politically motivated
  paper may slip by the proceedings for a brief time, but once under
  public scrutiny it should be downgraded or even
  retracted.\\[3\baselineskip]
\item
  \textbf{A key idea that may bring a lot of merit is ``karma''}. The
  exact details are quite tricky (and extremely interesting) and I
  briefly (very briefly) discussed them in another answer to
  captainpotty. The gist is that: papers without reviews that agree on
  the result's merit with sufficient weight will not be treated as
  equals to strong scientific results.\\
\item
  \textbf{Healthy incentives for reviewers are another aspect to both
  increasing review quality and boosting transparency}. If reviewers can
  receive academic merit for well-reasoned and insightful reviews, they
  will devote extra effort and welcome extra exposure of their reviews'
  writing. Our friends at~\href{http://prw.publons.com/}{Publons}~are
  working exactly on this. It's a great start.\\[3\baselineskip]
\item
  \textbf{Move away from quota-based publishing}. With the exception of
  the rare cases where the work is clearly unscientific or the methods
  are completely unreliable, the review process should always aim to
  improve the submitted work to a fully acceptable manuscript. There are
  already many venues without deadlines where submission can arrive at
  any point, which is great. Additionally, we should stop treating
  submissions that are off-topic for a venue as ``rejects'' but instead
  think of them as ``redirects'' and automate the resubmission flow into
  a sibling venue on a similar topic.\\
\end{enumerate}

In short, we need to build on the established classic peer-review
process, combine it with the best practices of large scale
question-answer services with karma such as Quora, StackOverflow and
Reddit, and adapt it to a digital reality that isn't constrained by the
price and scarcity of ink and paper.\\

Note: At Authorea, we currently offer neither peer-review, nor
submission capabilities, and think of ourselves as first a writing
platform and second a pre-print server for science. But we have thought
long and hard on the subject of peer-review, and may make steps in that
direction in the future. Already today, we offer one of the most
advanced automations for resubmission via our Export feature, which
allows restyling a manuscript to a journal's requirements in a matter of
seconds.\\

Thanks for your question.\\
\end{quote}

Read
the~\href{https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/52vtf7/im_alberto_pepe_the_guy_challenging_elsevier_im/d7nrp4w}{full
conversation on r/science here}.\\

\href{https://www.reddit.com/user/Jenna_bird}{Jenna\_bird}

Hi Alberto,\\

I think what you're doing is great; I would love to see a shift in how
academic literature is shared and I think we are long overdue for the
modernization that has already been readily accepted in other fields.\\

Unfortunately, I find that these academic journals all appear to suffer
from low impact factors currently. What would you say to a budding
scientist--who's career depends upon publishing in ``high quality''
journals--that would encourage them to publish in your journal?\\

Thanks!\\

\begin{quote}
\href{https://www.reddit.com/user/Alberto_Pepe}{}\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/3}{Alberto\_Pepe}\\

Co-Founder \textbar{} Authorea\\

Hi Jenna- I understand your concern: no matter how open and innovative
you may want to be, at the end of the day, as a scientist, you are
required to publish in ``high quality'' journals, because that is the
only way to get tenure, grants, and recognition in your community. I
think that in the next few years we will see new metrics and methods to
assess a scientist' contribution (metrics that go way beyond a journal's
impact factor and/or number of citations). But, while we wait for that
to happen, what can you do TODAY? Two things come to mind:\\

(1) deposit a pre-print or post-print of your article in an
institutional, disciplinary (or any other) repository that is indexed by
scholarly search engines. A pre-print is the version immediately prior
to what is published in a journal (and post-print immediately after).
Even if you lose your copyright on the published version, the pre-print
and post-print versions are YOURS. By depositing an open version of your
work, you are giving the entire world~\textbf{open access}~to your work
(and you and your work also become more visible!). If you write an
article on Authorea, all you have to do is make it public and it will be
a pre-print!\\

(2) if you have datasets and code associated with your work, publish
them with the paper. Publishing the data and code behind your
papers/images make your work more likely to be reproduced (and again,
they make you and your work more visible!). Most journals today do not
allow you to deposit data and code with your
paper.~\href{http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104798}{Putting
a link to a dataset in your paper is not enough because those links die
with time}. There are tools like Figshare, Zenodo and Dataverse that
allow you to deposit data/code and get a DOI for it. In Authorea, you
can take even a step further and include the data and
code~\textbf{inside}~your paper. My dream is that the paper of the
future will make data and code~\textbf{first class citizens}.\\
\end{quote}

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