Re: [tlug] Journals, Authors and 'Free Peer Review'

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Saturday, September 29, 2018 05:37 AM, Benjamin Kowarsch 
wrote:
> On 29 September 2018 at 00:10, Raymond Wan 
> <rwan.kyoto@example.com <mailto:rwan.kyoto@example.com>> wrote:
>     Maybe ArXiv allows it to reach a wide audience but just
>     having people tweet or "like" it doesn't give me any
>     confidence in it.
> And if your paper happens to be in a database that is not 
> behind a
> paywall and widely used, it means it will be available to a 
> wider
> audience, thereby increasing the likelihood of getting 
> citations.
>
> That's all there is to it.
>
> It has nothing to do with Twitter, nothing to do with likes.


Honestly, there really isn't a point in continuing this 
thread.  If we reach a point where one sentence in a very 
long e-mail gets singled out and thrown under a microscope, 
then any manner of civilized discourse has been thrown out 
the window.

For example, you could reply with a simple, "Why do you 
think there are tweets to ArXiv?"  And perhaps I would reply 
with a "Oh, I see.  I should clarify with..."  But, instead 
you chose this manner of response, which is quite 
unnecessary.  We've used up a lot of TLUG's inbox -- sorry 
to everyone else!

At least for me, this thread has been most informative as I 
thought it was interesting to hear from those who obviously 
have very strong feelings in support of ArXiv.  Alas, such 
people aren't people that I know either at my current 
workplace or any previous workplace that I have been at. 
(They have no objections to submitting to ArXiv, but 
definitely aren't strongly in support of it.)

Of course, I never had an intention to change your opinion 
and I would think you knew you can't change someone else's 
as well.  It seems that your beef is primarily with the 
"paywall" and mine is with "peer review" (or lack thereof). 
They are actually two different reasons that are invariably 
linked -- but they don't have to be.  Some day, someone 
might prove us wrong with a free (or reasonably priced) site 
with properly peer reviewed work.

In any case, I posted the results of the ACM SIGIR survey a 
few days:  http://sigir.org/forum/issues/june-2018/  (See 
"SIGIR Community Survey on Preprint Services" by Diane 
Kelly.) Perhaps if you're interested, you might want to see 
what others thought.

Have a good weekend!

Ray