It’s a huge difference whether the reviewer is some anonymous person unrelated to the journal or whether it’s an editor in chief of the journal itself. I don’t think it’s appropriate to call the latter peer-review (there are no “peers” involved), but that’s not important.
Editor in chief has a strong motivation to have a good quality journal. If he rejects a good article, it’s his loss. On the contrary, anonymous peer have stronger motivation to use this as an opportunity to promote (get cited) his own research than to help journal curate the best science.
Let me try to rephrase the shift I see in science. Over the 20th century, science became bureaucraciesed, the process of “doing science” was largely formalised and standardised. Researchers obsess about impact factors, p-values, h-indexes, anonymous peer reviews, grants, currents...
There are actual rules in place that determine formally whether you are “good” scientist. That wasn’t the case over the most of the history of the science.
Also the “full-time” scientist who never did any other job than academy research was much less common in the past. Take Einstein as an example.
Oh, I think we both definitely agree that science has changed a lot. I do also think that it still very clearly has maintained a lot of its structure from its very early days, and to bring things back to John’s top level point, it is less obvious that that structure would redevelop if we were to give up completely on academia or something like that.
It’s a huge difference whether the reviewer is some anonymous person unrelated to the journal or whether it’s an editor in chief of the journal itself. I don’t think it’s appropriate to call the latter peer-review (there are no “peers” involved), but that’s not important.
Editor in chief has a strong motivation to have a good quality journal. If he rejects a good article, it’s his loss. On the contrary, anonymous peer have stronger motivation to use this as an opportunity to promote (get cited) his own research than to help journal curate the best science.
Let me try to rephrase the shift I see in science. Over the 20th century, science became bureaucraciesed, the process of “doing science” was largely formalised and standardised. Researchers obsess about impact factors, p-values, h-indexes, anonymous peer reviews, grants, currents...
There are actual rules in place that determine formally whether you are “good” scientist. That wasn’t the case over the most of the history of the science.
Also the “full-time” scientist who never did any other job than academy research was much less common in the past. Take Einstein as an example.
Oh, I think we both definitely agree that science has changed a lot. I do also think that it still very clearly has maintained a lot of its structure from its very early days, and to bring things back to John’s top level point, it is less obvious that that structure would redevelop if we were to give up completely on academia or something like that.