Cameron Neylon

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[![Alchemical symbol for arsenic](http://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/300px-Arsenic_alchemical_symbol.svg_.png "Alchemical symbol for arsenic"){decoding="async"}](http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arsenic_alchemical_symbol.svg)
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Last Friday I spoke at the [STM Innovation
Seminar](http://www.stm-assoc.org/event.php?event_id=58) in London,
taking in general terms the theme I've been developing recently of
focussing on enabling user discovery rather than providing central
filtering, of enabling people to act as their own gatekeeper rather than
publishers taking that role on for themselves.

An example I used, one I've used before was the [hydride oxidation
paper](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ja904224y) that was
published in JACS, comprehensively demolished online and subsequently
retracted. The point I wanted to make was that detailed information, the
comprehensive view of what had happened was only available by searching
Google. In retrospect, as has been pointed out to me in private
communication, this wasn't such a good example because, there is often
more detailed information available in the published retraction. It
isn't always as visible as I might like, particularly to automated
systems but actually the ACS does a pretty good job overall with
retractions.

Had it come a few days earlier the [arsenic microbes
paper](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/01/science.1197258),
and subsequent [detailed
critique](http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html)
might well have made a better example. Here again, the detailed
criticism is not visible from the paper but only through a general
search on the web, or via specialist indexes like
[researchblogging.org](http://researchblogging.org). The external
reader, arriving at the paper, would have no idea that this conversation
was evenÂ occurring. The best case scenario is that if and when a formal
critique is published that this will be visible from the page, but even
in this case this can easily be buried in other citations from the
formal literature.

The arsenic story is still unfolding and deserves close observation, as
does [the critique of the P/NP paper from a few months
ago](http://cameronneylon.net/blog/p-%E2%89%A0-np-and-the-future-of-peer-review/).
However a broader trend does appear to be evident. If a high profile
paper is formally published, it *will* receive detailed, public
critique. This in itself is remarkable. Open peer review is happening,
even becoming common place, an expected consequence of the release of
big papers. What is perhaps even more encouraging as that when that
critique starts it seems capable of aggregating sufficient expertise to
make the review comprehensive. When Rosie Redfield first posted her
critique of the arsenic paper I
[noted](http://friendfeed.com/marcosdecarvalho/70d0f63d/rt-rosieredfield-i-ve-posted-full-analysis-of)
that she skipped over the
[EXAFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_X-ray_absorption_fine_structure "Extended X-ray absorption fine structure"){.zem_slink
rel="wikipedia"} data which I felt could be decisive. Soon after, people
with EXAFS expertise were in the comments section of the blog post,
pulling it apart
\[[1](http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html?showComment=1291608730703#c5858237327625900201),
[2](http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html?showComment=1291609669652#c4084558574612138),
[3](http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html?showComment=1291613181509#c1203801760214578039),
[4](http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html?showComment=1291613834503#c1433730233619915251)\].

Two or three things jump out at me here. First that the complaint that
people "won't comment on papers" now seems outdated. Sufficiently high
profile papers will receive criticism, and woe betide those journals who
aren't able to summon a *very comprehensive* peer review panel for these
papers. Secondly that this review is not happening on journal websites
even when journals provide commenting fora. The reasons for this are, in
my opinion, reasonably clear. The journal websites are walled gardens,
often requiring sign in, often with irritating submission or review
policies. People simply can't be arsed. The second is the fact that
people are much more comfortable commenting in their own spaces, their
own blogs, their community on twitter or facebook. These may not be
private, but they feel safer, less wide open.

This leads onto the third point. I've been asked recently to try to
identify what publishers (widely drawn) can do to take advantage of
social media in general terms. Forums and comments haven't really
worked, not on the journal websites. Other adventures have had some
success, some failures, but nothing which has taken the world by storm.

So what to do? For me the answer is starting to form, and it might be
one that seems obvious. The conversation will always take place
externally. Conversations happen where people come together. And people
fundamentally don't come together on journal websites. The challenge is
to capture this conversation and use it to keep the static paper in
context. I'd like to ditch the concept of the version of record but its
not going to happen. What we can do, what publishers could do to add
value and, drawing on theme of my talk, to build new discovery paths
that lead to the paper, is to keep annotating, keep linking, keep
building the story around the paper as it develops.

This is both technically achievable and it would add value that doesn't
really exist today. It's something that publishers with curation and
editorial experience and the right technical infrastructure could do
well. And above all it is something that people might find of sufficient
value to pay for.

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Image via Wikipedia  Last Friday I spoke at the STM Innovation Seminar in London, taking in general terms the theme I’ve been developing recently of focussing on enabling user discovery rather than providing central filtering, of enabling people to act as their own gatekeeper rather than publishers taking that role on for themselves.

Publicaciones de Rogue Scholar

Forward linking and keeping context in the scholarly literature