I picked up Arjendu’s Confused on a higher level blog the other day from Chad and made a little comment on a post about refereeing for expensive journals. I’m still a little conflicted about the fact that high-profile journals seem…

Well, let’s be honest — NO ONE understands more than a handful of papers in Phys. Rev. Which is why you need the Referee system to be trustworthy and efficient, since the someone needs to be the gatekeeper, given that consequences of publishing papers can be major professionally. Which is different from the consequences to science — that is about the result and not the publication, a subtle but important difference.

As for the collective weighing-in … hmm, as I tell my students, science is not a democracy. It doesn’t matter what the majority of people think, the right answer is what it is. So we do value *expert* opinion somewhat more, particularly at the ‘cutting edge’ which is where we are trying to publish. Which means you’d have to appoint ‘weigher-ins’ and well, we are back to non-anonymous refereeing, which privileges those with the power over the lives of junior commentators.

Hey, a thought, though: Perhaps making Referee reports available online (anonymously) would help, so people can see the kinds of junk Refereeing that we sometimes experience, examples of the good stuff, and also see some of the *process* of scientific debate. Linked to the journal subscription, of course.

I mean, the collective weighing-in of people like yourself either on your blog or someplace like arxiv.reddit.com would do the same trick but with more transparency and reach, don’t you think?