[AISWorld] Practical suggestions for improving journal cycle times

[mmora at securenym.net]

Colleagues,
I totally agree with these academic suggestions for (not improving but)
alleviating the review process in our discipline. In particular on:


 9) Abandon blind review. Blind review is
> supposed to free junior reviewers to reject the papers of their more
> powerful peers without repercussion. This obviously isn't working. It's
> protecting bad reviewers from well-deserved backlash. Knowing your name is
> on a review encourages you to stick to actionable suggestions rather than
> name calling and quibbling about tone.

Science should be not anonymously judged! and non-blind reviews really
demands that reviewers report clear objections (if the case) rather just
critiques on preferred additions to the research or similar issues.
In some journals in Statistical/Mathematics, the reviews are published at
the end of each paper.


>. A simpler, more
>  direct review process will encourage everyone to focus on key issues –
>  methodology and results rather than framing, positioning and tone –
> increasing quality.

It is a truth that a PhD in USA and other English language countries can
be gained with TOEFL from 550 to 600+ points. However, some reviews are
focused on style, tone, and minor grammatical issues rather in the
essential of research: new findings found through a systematic,
reproducible, testable, and reliable process.


Finally, on the topic that empirical research is the unique kind of
research, I disagree because conceptual research (not position papers)
provides also new findings. Other scientific disciplines cannot experiment
and doing empirical research (like Astronomy or Philosophy itself !) and
there are sciences !

Prof. Mora
Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
Mexico