Lovely article and I’m basically on board with most of it but I’m not sure I fully agree with your pessimism here. Peer reviewers are, undoubtedly biased towards the status quo, but editors aren’t (they’re usually covering a very wide range of fields often quite far from their specialisms) and are usually open to an author rejecting reviewers comments in favour of other reviewers. And if I may push back a little on the adjacent experts suggestion, this is a good idea to combat groupthink, but part of the reviewers role is to determine if a paper has value which in turn means knowing what has been published before and whether this is actually saying something new or just the same thing again. Without that check you could easily end up with many many papers on the same topic.
Thanks as ever for reading Friso, and for the kind words.
I appreciate where you're coming from, and I note that I failed to spell something important out. While peer review might have some deep flaws, it is still the best system we have. Peer review doesn't need binning, it needs widening and deepening, and better support for the people who donate their time doing it. Some kind of paper trail on peer reviews might be good, so people can see the way peer reviews have influenced work. I think academic training should include training on how to peer review, and how to do it constructively. There are loads of other tweaks that might be good too, I'm sure.
I concede on your adjacent-field expertise point. One possible resolution would be to get the person/people being refuted to peer-review in conjunction with others in adjacent fields. You have the originality problem solved, and you have people who are less snow-blinded by specialism which I think is a real asset. I understand in sciences you often have more than two peer reviewers, which seems like an improvement to me.
Lovely article and I’m basically on board with most of it but I’m not sure I fully agree with your pessimism here. Peer reviewers are, undoubtedly biased towards the status quo, but editors aren’t (they’re usually covering a very wide range of fields often quite far from their specialisms) and are usually open to an author rejecting reviewers comments in favour of other reviewers. And if I may push back a little on the adjacent experts suggestion, this is a good idea to combat groupthink, but part of the reviewers role is to determine if a paper has value which in turn means knowing what has been published before and whether this is actually saying something new or just the same thing again. Without that check you could easily end up with many many papers on the same topic.
Thanks as ever for reading Friso, and for the kind words.
I appreciate where you're coming from, and I note that I failed to spell something important out. While peer review might have some deep flaws, it is still the best system we have. Peer review doesn't need binning, it needs widening and deepening, and better support for the people who donate their time doing it. Some kind of paper trail on peer reviews might be good, so people can see the way peer reviews have influenced work. I think academic training should include training on how to peer review, and how to do it constructively. There are loads of other tweaks that might be good too, I'm sure.
I concede on your adjacent-field expertise point. One possible resolution would be to get the person/people being refuted to peer-review in conjunction with others in adjacent fields. You have the originality problem solved, and you have people who are less snow-blinded by specialism which I think is a real asset. I understand in sciences you often have more than two peer reviewers, which seems like an improvement to me.