I’m not sure what exactly you have in mind by “crowd-sourcing” in this context. Do you mean publishing online in a way that’s open for public comments and debate, whose content will come up whenever someone looks up the paper? If that’s what you mean, I do have a favorable view of this approach.
In fact, I’d say that the principal reason why such a system is not implemented in many areas is the sheer desire for ass-covering. Just imagine all the emperors in various degrees of nakedness who are presently hiding behind thick, impressive-sounding publication records, whose validity would however be seriously brought into question by this practice.
The way things are now, a paper can be retracted or marked as invalid only if outright plagiarism or data faking is proved. Otherwise, even those junk papers that have been debunked so convincingly that their authors were forced to publicly admit it still stand proudly in publication archives, both on paper and online, ready to fool any unsuspecting visitor who stumbles onto them.
I’m not sure what exactly you have in mind by “crowd-sourcing” in this context. Do you mean publishing online in a way that’s open for public comments and debate, whose content will come up whenever someone looks up the paper? If that’s what you mean, I do have a favorable view of this approach.
Yes, that’s what I meant by crowd-sourcing.
In fact, I’d say that the principal reason why such a system is not implemented in many areas is the sheer desire for ass-covering. Just imagine all the emperors in various degrees of nakedness who are presently hiding behind thick, impressive-sounding publication records, whose validity would however be seriously brought into question by this practice.
The way things are now, a paper can be retracted or marked as invalid only if outright plagiarism or data faking is proved. Otherwise, even those junk papers that have been debunked so convincingly that their authors were forced to publicly admit it still stand proudly in publication archives, both on paper and online, ready to fool any unsuspecting visitor who stumbles onto them.