Chris Gorgolewski: Multiple Comparisons

On a very cold afternoon in Berlin I managed to ask a few questions to Andrew Preston (co-founder of Publons ) who was in town for the Academic Publishing Europe 2014 conference: - Could you tell us a bit more about the platform you are building - publons.com. Where the idea came from? What kind of problems are you trying to solve? - Absolutely! I did a PhD in physics as well as a postdoc in the US, so I have experience the enjoyment and the trial of publishing papers first hand and I also have been a reviewer. By going through that process as well as talking to colleagues I realized that there must be a better way of doing this. That is the genesis of Publons. - What actually is a Publon? Good question! It is a joke in physics where there is a concept of fundamental particles: the electron is the fundamental unit of charge, the photon is the quantum of light etc. The Publon is the facetious term we use to refer to the minimum publishable unit of academic research. We thought...

Interesting things are happening in science publishing. In the recent months we witnessed how multiple post publication peer review platforms were born and gained popularity. In this post I will try to clarify what is post publication peer review, what are the differences between existing platforms and what those changes mean for the future of publishing. But before I begin let me say a few words about how most publishing works right now. We were always joking that we should start a new journal that would accept everything and use post publication peer review. To give it enough gravitas to compete with Nature and Science we decided to call it Truth. In the  picture (on the right) - a long time supporter of Truth -  +Jonathan Smallwood  . Peer review before the intertubes Say you are a scientist (if you are reading this it is very likely that you are, but let me try to make this topic understandable for people outside of academia). You have just discovered ...