However, I still think that once the original author/blog poster felt that his/her idea was ready to designate as a citable publication, then there should be an easy/efficient process in place to arrange for this through a DOI assignment. I don’t think that this would present any more lack of “quality control” than already exists in the current system of peer review within established journals, which is far from perfect. The traditional peer-review system is already seriously lacking in quality control, and always has been. I think most would agree that a lot of “awful” publications have already appeared and continue to appear routinely within the current system of peer-reviewed journals, and this is easily quantified by the fact that the vast majority of published papers receive very low citation frequencies.

The beauty of the blog system is that it is already designed to be self-assessing in a highly efficient manner. In other words the really bad ideas will indeed “sink quietly (and quickly) into the google archives” with little or no cost or inconvenience to anyone, whereas at the same time the really good ideas will have maximum visibility and will be poised to move rapidly to change the progress of science through exposure and dialogue exchange between bloggers. All of this can be easily quantified, with credit given where credit is due, by the citation frequency associated with the DOI assigned to the blog.

I think that the inevitable benefit here – i.e. a dramatic increase in the rate of progress of science – far outweighs the accumulation of marginal, redundant or “awful” contributions. The latter are easy to ignore and dismiss in cyberspace with a mouse click. By comparison, it is far more difficult to ignore the massive volumes of published literature that has virtually never been cited but that currently weighs heavily as printed pages on the shelves of libraries around the world.

Those that are worried principally about getting their idea published in a “well-respected journal” can wait the 12-24 months (after 2 or 3 rejections) to publish it there if they wish. But they may discover, while waiting impatiently for their paper to appear in print with volume and page numbers, that their idea has already been published earlier by a less-elitist colleague as a blog that carries just as much weight as a citable refereed publication. Given these alternatives, where do you think that the greatest minds will choose to publish their ideas?

Lonnie Aarssen

Perhaps one solution would be to let people post drafts on the blog, which could then be published “properly” later (perhaps in a web journal – Ecological Perspectives?) if they pass some quality test. That way the initial idea is “out there”, and can be commented on and criticsed before a version is finalised: it opens up the possibility of commenters becoming co-authors, if their contributions make significant improvements. In contrast, bad ideas can be allowed to sink quietly into the google archives.

The quality test would have to be formalised, if there were enough comments from people reading a submission perperly, then that would suffice, but 3 comments saying “Um, cool idea” might not be enough. At some point some editor(s) (no doubt part of the Evil Establishment) would have to make a decision about whether to publish.

OK, let’s see how long it take someone to point out what’s wrong with my suggestions. If nobody does then it suggests that the blog model isn’t going to work!

Bob