George Currie

Peer Review at the Crossroads Peer review has long been regarded as a cornerstone of scholarly communication, ensuring high quality and credibility of published research. Although academic journals trace their origins back three ...

New paper out: "Peer Review at the Crossroads"

I analyzed 4 peer review models from traditional gatekeeping to Publish-Review-Curate. Key finding: no single model is ideal, but PRC shows promise for transparency & accessibility.

Open access: doi.org/10.1002/leap...

#PeerReview #OpenScience #STS

We need to move beyond the accept/reject binary in peer review - LSE Impact Binary reject/accept peer review has become conflated with validation. The authors outline three myths sustaining this confusion and how we might escape it.

👀ICYMI: "Binary decisions are inevitable, in the choice to read, cite, or disregard something, but they are not fit as proxies for scientific validity"

@georgealfredcurrie.bsky.social & @damianpattinson.bsky.social

#OpenResearch #PeerReview #AcademicChatter

The Cost of Confusion: Dispelling Myths about the NIH Public Access Policy and Article Processing Charges Last July, the NIH issued an RFI on limiting direct spending on article processing charges (APCs). Over 900 public responses offered valuable perspectives but also exposed widespread misconceptions about the NIH Public Access Policy and scholarly publishing.

Corinna Turbes and I discuss comments submitted to the NIH Office of Science Policy Request for Information on Article Processing Charges from the lens of dispelling myths about public access at The National Institutes of Health in Upstream by FORCE11:

https://doi.org/10.54900/6m4xn-y3m49

Attending the Open Science Fair this month? Join our Head of Publishing, Fiona Hutton, on Sept 17 as she explains why it’s time to embrace more meaningful approaches to research assessment: buff.ly/FC06AfH

Advancing Transparency in Academic Publishing: The Growing Adoption of Open Peer Review Practices  - F1000 Exploring how visible review processes benefit authors, reviewers, and the wider research community Peer reviewers are essential to scholarly publishing. Their expert feedback provides validation of the research and helps authors improve their academic work. However, this crucial step in publishing research is all too often inaccessible to readers and the reviewers’ work often goes […]

💻 #F1000 Blog Post

Associate Publisher Emma Smith talks about F1000's open peer review model and how open peer review processes can benefit authors, reviewers, and the wider research community.

Read now: spr.ly/63321fAyMT

#OpenResearch #OpenAccess #PeerReview

Curious about the future of #ResearchAssessment? Hear from leaders shaping change at #OSFair2025: national perspectives, @coarassessment.bsky.social #OpenScience in action, responsible AI & open scholarly communication.

📍17 Sept | @cern.bsky.social
🔗https://www.opensciencefair.eu/registration-2025

Are you an early-career researcher (or someone hoping to help ECRs) working in #openscience or #metascience? The @reproducibilitea.org podcast is looking for guests for our next season of episodes! We'd love to feature ECR voices foremost – the next generation of scientists should be heard the most!

Knowledge Exchange branding with the text: Knowledge Exchange begins exploring how alternative platforms can help shape the future of scholarly publishing, View our work so far on Octopus!

The Knowledge Exchange and @researchconsulting.bsky.social activity Alternative Publishing Platforms has now published its research questions and approach via Octopus!

tinyurl.com/KENews03072025

13 Open Science Tools for Publishing Open publishing can be hard to navigate. There are a lot of options and the definitions vary widely. Discover 13 useful open publishing tools that I think you shouldn't miss!

One thing you can do today to save time in the future? Bookmarking 📑 these #openscience publishing tools.

I did all the heavy lifting for you -> https://annaclemens.com/blog/open-science-publishing-access-tools/

#AcademicWriting #PhDLife #PhDchat

Open Science: What is publish, review, curate? Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) solves some of the challenges in research communication today. We take a look at the range of organisations working to make PRC a bigger part of scholarly publishing.

Journals don't filter research, they stratify it. The Publish-Review-Curate model relies on open discussion, not misplaced trust.

Publish: Post research as a preprint

Review: Public reviews inform wider discussion of research

Curate: Community recommendations

elifesciences.org/inside-elife...

We did something radical that shouldn’t feel radical: we stopped funding science built for journals so that we can reimagine scientific publishing. First @arcadiascience.com. Now at @asterainstitute.bsky.social.

Join us for a July Community Call to discuss reimagining scholarly communication! 📝

‪@brembs.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy‬ will discuss replacing traditional journals with decentralized, community-governed infrastructure.

🔗 Register us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Thanks David! The argument isn't against peer review as something that should happen but it's skeptical of what's actually happening in our current system. It's calling for it to be used differently and made much more transparent. Remove the accpet/reject function and make the reports public.

I don't believe that's what's really happening.

If research is rejected after peer review, it can be submitted elsewhere, on and on, until a journal accepts it. Publishers use journal cascades to redirect rejections into "lower-tier" journals. Is peer review filtering research or stratifying it?

Toward Science‐Led Publishing Click on the article title to read more.

How can we rethink and reorganise #ScholarlyCommunication to better advance science?

What is the role of #PeerReview? Should #Preprints take centre stage?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

#AcademicSky #OpenScience #ResearchIntegrity

@elife.bsky.social @learnedpublishing.bsky.social

I get it but I think whichever venue we chose for this there would be an angle for someone to ask "why there?" depending on their stance.

It was partly a timing thing, it made enough sense, and we could make it OA. I'm grateful for the experience we had publishing with Learned Publishing tbh.

Thanks Jason! There are a few comments I've had giving the picture that Astro journals are doing something right. I'll look more into this area, thanks for sharing your article!

It's a relief for me too! 😅

Great opportunity to hear about PubPeer from founder @brandonstell.bsky.social - sometimes controversial, PubPeer has undoubtedly been force for more rigorous science 👏

Near future academic publishing – a speculative social science fiction experiment Published in Learning, Media and Technology (Vol. 49, No. 4, 2024)

A vision of the future? #ScholarlyPublishing 2035

"They replaced impact factors, the h-index, and other esteem indicators associated with commercial academic publishing with more nuanced metrics..."

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We embraced #preprints when the world was in need of a rapid solution and then returned to the journal-based status quo as if other issues can wait.

We have journals that stand as signifiers of trust and quality. The conceit is validation. But rather than filter research they stratify it according to brand values.

We have an overburdened and industrialised #PeerReview system where the outputs are often hidden from readers, and entirely wasted when a process ends in rejection.

#OpenPeerReview #PublishReviewCurate #ScholarlyPublishing

We have technology and infrastructure to radically rethink how science is communicated and evaluated. Yet we still rely on a system that evolved within the limitations of print.

Screenshot of article summary of: Toward Science-Led Publishing by Damian Pattinson, George Currie published as an opinion piece, in Learned Publishing Summary The current dynamic of scholarly publishing prioritises the wants of the publishing industry over the needs of the research community. This article explores this theme through the lens of ‘publisher-led science’ as a description of our current status quo, and through ‘science-led publishing’ as an improved future state. We argue that financial motivations central to most publishing distort how research is presented, how it is assessed and even what research is undertaken, leading to a system that hinders, rather than facilitates, scientific progress. We propose three elements of a science-led publishing approach that would accelerate research communication, incentivise collaboration between authors, editors and reviewers, and create a more transparent and equitable research landscape. We believe that research funding and research assessment are two of the primary levers for wider change in research and research culture and consider the future purpose of scholarly publishing in a world where these proposals have been widely adopted.

Does publishing serve science or is science serving publishing?

Damian Pattinson and I (@elife.bsky.social) argue scientific publishing has evolved into a system that, rather than facilitate scholarly communication, distorts and dictates it.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

#OpenScience