Author Topic: Ouchie for Social Sciences  (Read 3522 times)

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Offline CP5670

  • Dr. Evil
  • Global Moderator
  • 212
Re: Ouchie for Social Sciences
Been there done that, amen! I once had to review a paper on my field of Physics coming from Italy. What was said in the abstract did not reflect at all what the actual content was. Their original manuscript was like 6 pages long. My review notes were 8 pages long, given the numerous errors, unsubstantiated claims and that the paper did not provide enough information for a repetition of the experiment. I believe I made a mistake in giving them a chance to improve it, in the hindsight I should have failed the paper immediately. It took a bloody weekend to go through that. My biggest gripe here is that I don't get paid anything for reviewing papers, but it is OK for the publishers to charge like $ 40 from a single download! :hopping: Lesson learned, I don't review publications any more - it was that one contribution of mine for betterment of human kind.

I review stuff pretty frequently for math and EE journals, but try to put strict limits on how much time I spend with it. I limit the review to one page or so and almost never read the paper in full detail, and I imagine most people do the same. The really good and really bad papers can be done quickly, but the borderline ones take much more effort, especially if there is an endless back and forth with the authors and multiple revisions that don't address any of the issues. A few fields like finance do actually pay the reviewers (and charge big submission fees to the authors to cover it), but that is rare.

 

Offline AtomicClucker

  • 28
  • Runnin' from Trebs
Re: Ouchie for Social Sciences
This reminds me of The Register's article on a lot of brain scan 'research and studies' being proven absolute junk because there's more pseudo in the Social Sciences than science.
Blame Blue Planet for my Freespace2 addiction.