Tag Archives: rejection

Too many complaints about eLife

Following the recent announcement of eLife to overcome a accept/reject decision

We have found that these public preprint reviews and assessments are far more effective than binary accept or reject decisions ever could be at conveying the thinking of our reviewers and editors, and capturing the nuanced, multidimensional, and often ambiguous nature of peer review.

there are now many complaints

Destroying eLife’s reputation for selectivity does not serve science. Changes that pretend scientists do not care about publishing in highly selective journals will end eLife’s crucial role in science publishing, says long-time supporter Paul Bieniasz

While the announcement could have come in a more polite way – creating a second tier of an eLife archive – I believe this is a good decision.The rejection attitude  is basically driven that “your inferior paper would harm my journal impact” while it just goes to another journal. Publication is seldom stopped so it produces workload at other journals and for other reviewers in particular when the initial reviews are not public.

The eLife decision therefore breaks a vicious circle.

Grant preparation costs may exceed grant given

FYI – a citation from “Accountability of Research

Using Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) statistics, we show that the $40,000 (Canadian) cost of preparation for a grant application and rejection by peer review in 2007 exceeded that of giving every qualified investigator a direct baseline discovery grant of $30,000 (average grant). This means the Canadian Federal Government could institute direct grants for 100% of qualified applicants for the same money. We anticipate that the net result would be more and better research since more research would be conducted at the critical idea or discovery stage.

Will that be ever read by our governments? Nay, nay.