Philica - The 'open source' scientific journal

Comments

• Capt.Montoya Ranger

  July 2006

  I don't know what to make of it...
  
  I don't see the need.
  I don't think it's a creditable source [i]yet[/i].
  If it accomplishes what they want it may become a creditable source but I doubt it will.
  
  My main objection is with [i]immediate[/i] publication. Peer review can be a good review/re-write system. Your original submission is usually commented upon and you make changes (which are supposed to be improvements) in text, figures, etc. before submitting in final form. Sometime the best thing that can happen to a paper is have it rejected, because then you have to redo some things and improve others, then write a new article and then publish. Seems to me that their review system is only to comment and that few changes can be made to existing articles.
  
  I see a bit of bias from social scientists (it originates from psychologists) in it. Physical sciences have different issues.
  I'm not disparaging social science, I respect those fields greatly, but they have greater problems with reproducibility and methodology. I'll take a question from their FAQ to exemplify the differences.
  [quote][b]With no editors and with the immediate publication of submissions, isn’t Philica just going to fill up with junk articles?[/b]
  This is an important question, but who is to say what is junk and what is not? Traditional journals inevitably reflect the biases of a handful of editors and reviewers. This means that if your paper doesn’t match their theoretical or methodological outlook, it won’t be printed; [/quote] This is much less of a problem in physical sciences. Experimental methods are more standardized and theories are less varied, in any event we have lots of physical phenomena as referents, if your experiment goes against the way nature is supposed to work you better have an excellent explanation and thorough replication.
  [quote]differences of opinion, however genuine and fair, are very rarely tolerated in the traditional publishing route.[/quote] Differences of opinion play less of a role, when you have some known experimental fact to compare against. [quote]Editors and reviewers wield altogether too much power over what gets into the literature (and we say this advisedly, having done both roles ourselves).[/quote] In this they may have a point, but there are several avenues for publishing. You may not get your article published in a more prestigious journal but you have other respectable choices.
  
  I completely disagree with something they say in the first answer in the FAQ: [quote]The other major benefit to arise from the Philica system is that because we don’t need an editorial staff we can accept submissions from absolutely any field of research. This shocks many academics, because they aren’t used to this, but be bold for a moment and ask yourself: who actually benefits from a system where journals contain articles from only one narrow field? Certainly not the reader, because they still need to read lots of different journals to ensure they keep up to date with the literature, and today cannot hope to do this properly without using some sort of electronic search engine. No, the reality is that journals with a narrow focus were essentially a publisher’s convenience.[/quote] Sorry but no, it's not just a publisher's convenience. Suppose I was an analytical chemist I would need to read veryf few (if any at all) articles on organic chemistry or physical chemistry. If I need to keep up with what people are doing in nanomaterials, I certainly don't need to read literature in teorethical physics, I might not even need to read literature on materials in general. If I specialized in ceramic materials I wouldn't need to keep up with polymer synthesis, biology, physics, analytical chemistry, etc.
  And et cetera, etc, &c...
  I really do see a need for specialized journals.
  
  I think that good scientific journals enter a "virtuous circle" state, where by publishing good research they become known as good journals and thus they attract more good papers. I doubt that will happen with Philica. Good for them if it does, but I believe it will fill with junk, even true academics write junk sometimes.
  
  A positive aspect is that they only accept articles from academics, but I believe their standard for confirmation (a letter by the member, no need for a letter from the institution) could be more rigorous.
  
  I don't think that the Creative Commons license is suited for scientific work, but I'd have to think and read more to give a coherent argument about this. My objection stems from the idea that the creative commons license was created with artistic works in mind, and while science is a creative endeavour a scientific article is extremely different from a novel or short story.
  
  I should also not that some of their intented goals might be already served in some fields by the "Public Library of Science" journals ( [url]http://www.plos.org/[/url] ), which are also "open access".
  
  I also think that most of what they want to accomplish is already taken care of by existing preprint servers or open access journals (like PLOS). About those I should note that the only one I know to be succesful is the ArXiv physics preprint server.
  The one Chemistry preprint server I knew of failed because it didn't get enough submissions to be useful. I suspect something similar might happen to certain sections (if not all) of Philica.
• Biggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>

  July 2006

  I agree with most of what Capt.Montoya said. It [i]could[/i] become a credible source, but I doubt it will. Yes, there are issues with the current process, but it is there and has developed to be the way it is for good reasons. The biggest risk with this one is that it will become impossible to find the good work amongst the rubbish because you have to read lots of reviews for every article to see if it's actually valid work.
  
  It's an interesting experiment, but it remains to be seen how well it will work in practice.