How should people identify themselves when giving feeback/review to EarthArXiv preprints?

My impression from the previous discussion Comment/Feedback section in article page was that while people were sympathetic to the idea of adding comments, there were good arguments not to do this ourselves because it is a difficult task (to guard against spam, etc., tools for moderation) and would time consuming (moderation). In this new thread people implicitly seem to accept the idea of comments. Would it be an idea to put up a poll or something like that to test the waters?

Personally I would argue that if we do this, also anonymous comments should be possible. In science the arguments count, not who makes them. Someone accusing a senior researcher of making a clear mistake or worse in public can reasonably want to have some protection in the form of anonymity. If any comments are not appropriate that should be prevented by pre-moderating the comments, in my view.

Hypothes.is would allow for comments. At the moment everyone could do so; it is beyond our control; there are no moderation tools, that does not fit to the philosophy of web annotation. There are also no moderated channels for now. At least in theory everyone could because somehow the EarthArxiv does not work together with Hypothes.is. Maybe because of the fancy PDF embedding in a web page. See previous thread.

Let's try this and see how it develops.

Han Geurdes,

Geurdes data science kvk64522202

Member of the UNGGIM Private Sector Network.

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Read my solution of the Clay millennium Navier-Stokes problem at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23311835.2017.1284293

Read our solution to Bells theorem at:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.00005

Just to be clear, the sign up section has already an option to use ORCID, doesn't it? So if comments are allowed, wouldn't they have the option to sing up using their ORCID account like authors have when they upload a MS? Will this suffice? If this is the case, we perhaps should encourage everyone to sign up in ORCID before signing up in EarthArXiv

While I acknowledge the value of the comments made above about anonymity, I beg to disagree. If there were comments (see Victor Venema's first paragraph above), my take is that full disclosure is the way to go (to administrators and rest of users alike). To me, the main problem with reviewers is that they may hide behind anonymity to unfairly discredit the research they review (especially when it challenges the "old" -their- view). I agree that the arguments are what counts not who make them and that a dangerous favour-by-favour approach could potentially settle among few, but I'd argue that those are minor in comparison with the research blockage that anonymity tends to produce. Anyone fairly pointing out somebody else's mistake improves the outcome, and should be the norm and not something to fear. If we don't promote the proper actions, we succumb to the improper ones.

To me, the main problem with reviewers is that they may hide behind anonymity to unfairly discredit the research they review (especially when it challenges the "old" -their- view).

To me the main problem with forcing identity is that it becomes risky to challenge the old view, which is typically held by the old alpha males. The large number of women who do not report sexual harassment, #MeToo, indicates how much power they have to make and break your career.

In the reviewing system if Grassroots scientific publishing I was thinking of three levels:

1. A synthesis written by a named editor.

2. Peer reviews of the full paper including a numerical assessment of the quality, where the editor should at least know the names to assess the expertise and reliability of the reviewer.

3. Comments, which can be made by anyone, also anonymously.

Comments and peer reviews would be pre-moderated. For me moderation is the best tool against the fear that studies are "unfairly discredited".

By the way, @geoda, what do you mean with "research blockage"? Do you mean that a paper could be blocked by a comment on a preprint server? We are not in the scenario here of a peer reviewer who can advice the editor to reject a manuscript.

A powerful senior researcher may have the ability to write a comment that influences the reviewers and thus have some indirect ability to block a paper, but he will only have that kind of power if he uses his name. An anonymous comment can only convince by the power of its arguments, not by the authority and the power of the writer.

P.S. It has a certain irony that @geoda is commenting pseudonymously here. It makes it easier to write something. Thus having the option of anonymous comments will also increase the feedback the authors will get, which would be my main (selfish) motivation to send my manuscripts to a preprint server.

Agreed @geoda. But here we also have a case of the test of the pudding is in the eating. I do not want to go on and on about my "it was mathematically possible" despite the many impossibles of stakeholders who were biased. If a full paper is given next to the ridicule and the you are a crackpot, then the attacked authors can try to turn the table.

What I would definitely like to be cautious about us the arXiv gen-phys verbal trick of moderators to suppress a view "because the moderator feels that the paper can be improved by peer review". Then the "peers" dishonestly review. Then the whole proposition is off the table without a fair discussion of really impartial scientists.

In general I would also like to warn against the (hidden from the public) black listing. If you put a researcher on such a list and think it is unavoidable, then make the list public. Let everybody know what the criteria are to be on that list and what to do to be off the list. Blacklists, framing etcetera are unscientific ways to solve a scientific dispute. Even Phys.Rev.A did not escape from using blacklists to suppress authors from rehabilitation. Essentially it is a wicked practice. Einstein fell victim to it.

"If we don't promote the proper actions, we succumb to the improper ones.". This is absolute FIRE from @geoda, and something I absolutely, 100% agree with. Everything we've done for EarthArXiv has been in the interest of fairness and openness, with constructive discussion being a key part of that. I here some of the arguments about anonymity, some of which are good, but I think the main reason people deploy it is to be destructive. That's not what we're about.

Some senior researchers have a lot of power due to their roles in funding agencies, writing reviews for manuscript and research proposal, and through hiring decisions they make themselves and those made by their friends and dependants. I do not think it is fair that it becomes risky to point our problems with their work by forcing people to sign comments, while it is easy to bash a PhD student.

Where is the openness when people low on the food chain have to fear writing comments and will not write them? I think the main purpose of anonymity is to facilitate speaking truth to power. The comments here are naturally short, on my blog I write more often about the destructive power of badly implemented openness, for example in my last post on the Scholarly Communication conference FORCE17.

On my blog I allow for anonymous comments. This has never been destructive because I moderate the comments. Someone needs to feel responsible for the quality of the conversation. The lack of moderation is what makes Twitter unpleasant and newspaper and YouTube comments nearly useless and sometimes destructive.