Maybe someone should post thoughts on how quality and amount of papers in prestigious journals is not that correlated. Would you like to do that? Remember that now posting in ap.com is open to everyone here.

First of all, this article is a concept paper and not a “commentary”; I doubt that it is possible to do empirical research on this topic, even with a hefty research budget [which is unlikely to be provided]. Secondly, the paper challenges the hegemony of “legitimate knowledge”, even if that is not the author’s intention. I say this because the purpose of refereeing is to guarantee a minimum standard of published work, and to assist authors to reach that standard with some guidance. However, as we all know, the personal or political agenda of many referees is clearly visible, and is really very damaging to the quality of published papers. I would go so far as to assert that about half of what appears in “top-quality” journals is low quality. Furthermore, many leading scholars choose to exercise a mafia mentality and restrict publication of rival work.
Thirdly, some journal editors do show good judgement in dealing with referees: I used to throw quite a few referees’ reports in the waste bin, owing to their clear self-interested bias. However, bias is not always visible, and many referees these days are quite junior — with unpredictable and opaque personal agendas.

The end result of all of this is the following:
(1) You cannot rely on the quality of articles in top journals
(2) Many high-quality papers are published on the internet, in semi-refereed journals or as working papers
(3) The reliance of universities and others on publication in named peer-reviewed journals has created an oligopolistic effect, which is damaging to the production of knowledge.
(4) And yes, contemporary academics can be analogised to whores: isn’t it about time they rebelled against it?

First; if one follows the link that mr Goffe kindly has supplied, after the initial posting, to the text it sure seems that is a fully fledged article and not a commentary. Not least because it has quite a few references, but also because it is after all fairly long. Like an article in length. Now this is not an effort to neglects its merits.

Second; the issue it addresses is of course not a secret, and the publication was back on 03, rather it appears to be common, albeit very very tacit “knowledge”. So it is a bit odd that it hasn’t been more widely spread. After all what it addresses is part of the tricks of the trade so to say. It merely stipulates some of the working conditions for researchers, academics, in short people who’d like to earn a living by unveiling, creating, finding etc. more knowledge about the social, scientific and other worlds we are prone to make and explore.

Third; who’d really put in the effort to argue against that some, not all, reviewers like it when they are being referred to and quoted? Who’d not really appreciate that some, not all, reviewers know full well who is writing a paper when they read it because the recognize the language, the models, the epistemological peculiarities and other what nots of the guild?

And finally; isn’t it better to acknowledge how some, not all, academics actually do, say, think, write and so on, rather than attempt to stiff upper lip it or just virtually try to pretpend it’s not there. After all the “proverb” to publish or perish does mean something to a whole lot of people who do not enjoy e.g. the priviliges of having a tenure, a chair, an appointment as a reviewer, an eternal cornucopia of grants…

Peace

H

The solution: remove the veto powers from the reviewers. Use the editor’s feeling as the only criterion. Why? Because the editor is the only one who knows how the paper fares relative to other submissions

I can only speak for life science publishing, but comparing the submission to other submissions is the job of the editor, and comparing the submission to the current work in the field is the job of the reviewers. The editor might have a feeling for what’s timely, but they won’t always be able to judge whether or not the techniques used are valid and properly performed.