"John Edser"  wrote in message
news:cmhght$put$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> A few years ago I suggested that sbe should start to
> electronically publish sbe peer reviewed papers.
> [snip]

I have a variety of comments.  The thread seems to have gone
metastatic, and my comments touch on several of the sub-threads,
so it seems best to attach my post here at the root.

Someone, "r_norman" I believe, makes the point that professionals
are unlikely to use this mode of publishing and are also unlikely
to volunteer to serve as reviewers.  He further claims that
professionals do not use sbe as a "sounding board" - they post
here only as part of their educational duty in service to the
public.

I suspect that this is mostly true.  However, there is a large
class of sbe posters that do use sbe as a sounding board.  I would
characterize these people as "serious amateurs" - the class includes
John, myself, Tim Tyler, Michael Ragland, Peter Fell, Tom Hendricks,
and several others.  In calling these people "serious", I don't
necessarily imply that they are worth taking seriously, but I do
believe that these people have done some reading of the scientific
literature and believe they have something fresh to say.  Furthermore,
they are willing to put some effort into saying it well.  I think that
a "watered down" peer review process and publication mechanism would
be of interest to this class of sbe poster.

Of course, one person on my list - Tim - has already announced himself
as "not interested".  Tim, of course, frequently does
"publish" - to
his own web site, without any kind of review.  IMHO, he still
produces a polished product.  So the question arises, why can't the
other serious amateurs follow Tim's path?  Correct me if I am wrong,
Josh, but I believe that there is a outstanding offer to have
sbe/ediacara provide a server for sbe-related non-peer-reviewed
papers that meet some very minimal standards.  What does the serious
amateur gain by moving from this kind of free self-publishing to a
more formal quasi-peer-review medium?  What does the reader gain?

It seems that there are three methods already available for the
serious amateur to get his ideas out there: (1) self-publish to the
web as Tim does, (2) post to sbe, and receive vigorous public and
voluntary "peer-review" by reply-post, (3) bite the bullet and
work through the standard peer-review process in standard journals.
John's proposal seems to provide a fourth method which is a pleasant
compromise among these existing three.  Presumably, he wants a process
that produces a product that is more "certified" than self-publishing,
more polished than an sbe-post, and less orthodox than a journal
article.  I have to admit, that sounds like an attractive compromise
to me.  But what exactly is it that is being certified, and by whom?

It strikes me as curious that John criticizes the standard peer-review
process as "group-selectionist", yet demands that the proposed sbe
board of reviewers be elected.  I'm not sure that I want democracy
and science to cohabit.  Allow me to suggest a more free-market
approach, and a model closer to movie-reviews than to peer-reviews:
A variety of people offer their services as reviewers.  (Perhaps
their self-nomination should require two or three seconds to be
effective.)  An author who gets approval from any two (or maybe three)
reviewers can be published.  The reviewers are named at publication
time.  Each reviewer sets (and publishes) his own standards for
acceptance.  Readers can form their own preferences for which reviewers
they trust.  (I won't go to a movie that gets a bad review from
Siskel and Ebert, and I avoid ones that get good reviews from Lyons.)

Reviewers need not be professionals, though of course readers may take
this into account.  Authors will seek to get the most respected
reviewers available to review their papers - if they fail to impress
the well-respected reviewers, they can always try again with a less
respected one.  And, of course, any reviewer can reject a paper
simply because it is outside the reviewer's field of competence.
It is then the author's job to find a reviewer who claims to be
competent.

Given a setup something like this, let me be the first to announce
my candidacy for the review panel.  My self-proclaimed fields of
competence are origin-of-life and mathematical modeling (as long as
the models are simple enough).  My self-proclaimed criteria for
acceptance are "clarity" and "honesty". 
"Clarity" is self-explanatory,
though it does include mathematical coherence, where applicable.
"Honesty" is not so much a moral issue as one of not misinforming
the reader.  I will try my best to prevent mischaracterization of
the orthodox positions, attacks against straw men, and weak arguments
in general.  Opinion and intuition is welcome, as long as it is
identified as such.
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