Although I am very much pro-comment, I strongly agree that conflating this issue with that of overlay journals is not a good way to go.

(I’ll save my thought on comments for another time, because for the moment I just want to get behind the notion of separating out these two distinct issues. I’d hate it if people who, rightly or wrongly, dislike comments to feel they have to object to overlay journals for that reason.)

For what it’s worth, I think the conflation of these two important ideas – publishing in the EpiSciences mode, and having comment pages be mandatory – is unproductive. I imagine it’s going to take a lot of work to set up the Epijournals and make them a success, without taking on the added complication of convincing people of the merits of commentary on articles.

I’d advocate starting these journals *without* comment pages, or with author-opt-in comment pages. I’d hope there would be aggressive moderation, if comments were indeed enabled. Having a large number of mathematician-hours spent on moderation of comments seems like rather a waste.

It that refers to my describing your comment as “complete nonsense”, then you’re quite right, and I withdraw that description, with my apologies. I do think you are completely wrong on this, but that’s not at all the same thing as nonsense. My bad.

Let me just repeat the part of my comment which I hope is non controversial.

“I myself don’t want to force models on anybody, but rather to try out various different models and see what works.”

Tim, I am very happy that we are in agreement on this important issue. Indeed one thing that I found missing from the one-year later letter (next post) is a clear objection to any attempt to force any model on anybody, and especially a clear objection to the idea of forcing (the “author pays”) open publishing model on scientists by grant agencies and governments.

(Actually I did not intend to include the last sentence. This is a complicated issue and, in any case, there were various other good reasons against the model of author pays. But when I glued and pased it was unintentionally included. Still, I do stand also by my comment that enforcing scientists the form of publishing is harming their academic freedom, and let me add, Mike, that I disagree with your position and find your language disappointing.)

I am sorry to be oppositional, but I think this is complete nonsense. Academic freedom means the freedom to choose what to study and to state conclusions that may be unpopular. It does not mean the freedom to lock work that the public paid for behind walls that prevent them from benefitting from it. In my book that remains completely unacceptable, and any “publishing” regime that does not make all published papers immediately available with no barriers and no embargoes is not really publishing at all.

Tim, I am very happy that we are in agreement on this important issue. Indeed one thing that I found missing from the one-year later letter (next post) is a clear objection to any attempt to force any model on anybody, and especially a clear objection to the idea of forcing (the “author pays”) open publishing model on scientists by grant agencies and governments.

Enforcing open access publication on scientists is in clear violation of the academic freedom principle

I may be misinterpreting you, but that sounds like an example of status quo bias. The current model with expensive subscriptions and decisions made in secret is one that not everybody supports, but it is “forced on scientists” by the historical accident that it was the natural model in a pre-internet age. I myself don’t want to force models on anybody, but rather to try out various different models and see what works. If we ended up with more than one way of doing things, with some people preferring to publish in one way and others in another, then that would in my view be a satisfactory outcome. In particular, if a journal had comment pages, I would support the right for authors to opt out.

I do not think that the issue of gender bias, while very serious, is the only problematic issue in the brave new world of open, public, pseudo-democratic, Internet-based science, which comments in epi-journals is a small part of. The bias is in favor of the more well-known, more well-connected, more vocal, and more provocative members of the scientific community. Enhancing such bias (which exists also in the system we already have), and moving it to the area of peer-reviewed scientific publications is not good for science and not good for the scientific community. In addition to the matter of bias, comments and other aspects of open science require from individual scientists substantial additional time and effort.

In my opinion, perhaps the most crucial point is this. Academic freedom means that individual scientists have freedom in most aspects of their academic and scientific work. One of the dangerous aspects of the “academic spring” is the attempt to force on scientists, either by peer-pressure, or even by regulations, some models of publishing (and scientific interactions) that not everybody support. Some scientists would like to see their work open for the public and subject to discussions and comments by laymen and beginners, and some other scientists do not care about it and mainly aim at the few individuals in their own exclusive areas, and there are many intermediate and different ways.

Regarding gender-bias, the fact of the matter is that in all comment-rich interactive mathematical arenas women’s participation is very small – much below their (already small) proportion among mathematicians. This fact, Gabor, contradicts many of the statements that you make with so much confidence but with little evidence. I fully identify with your wishful thinking and sentiments but we do have to examine the factual matter.

All I said was that I think that open communication about the values produced by the members of a democratic community helps destroy the prejudices about the members themselves, assuming of course that the members are more interested in the values than in the prejudices. I said I thought this was the case with young mathematicians. To put it differently, it feels totally absurd that women would always play an inferior role in science; there seems to be a clear evolutionary drive to diminish this imbalance. So my best idea would be to speed up evolution by speeding up communication.

Of course, as an evolutionary process, even if it goes in the direction that I’m hoping, it still could be slow, and there still could be mistakes. If you don’t want to participate in this by making your papers available for online commenting, that’s totally up to you. But if you are convinced that this would not be going in the right direction, I would like to know why. And if you have a better suggestion, I would like to know that even more.

This is getting beyond the topic of epijournals, but what is your alternative? I can only think of hiding identities, which would be pretty much a nightmare.