When you start a blog, the natural thing is to want to feel that you’re in control of it, and that means controlling what can be posted there.  But that’s a mistake.  Moderation means that people can’t see their own comments, which is alienating; but more importantly, it means other people can’t see them, which in turn means that all discussion grinds to a halt until such time as you happen to moderate.

Another blast from the past: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-6988 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“6988” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/10/18/2000-ads-flagrantly-plagiarised-brontosaurus/2000ad-prog-10-back-cover-flesh-card-game-brontosaur/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2000ad-prog-10-back-cover-flesh-card-game-brontosaur.jpeg” orig-size=“522,344” comments-opened=“1”

“But Mike”, you say, “What’s wrong with publishers making a profit?” Nothing is wrong with publishers making a profit.

As things stand there are two principal types of written communication in science: papers and blog posts. We’ve discussed the relative merits of formally published papers and more informal publications such as blog-posts a couple of times, but perhaps never really dug into what the differences are between them. Matt and I have been discussing this offline, and at one point Matt suggested that authorial intent is one of the key differences.

Last Friday I got an email from Dr Stuart Taylor, Commercial Director of the Royal Society, wanting to set up a phone-call to talk about the issue I raised about the editorial procedure on Biology Letters . I got back to him with my Skype handle, but without fixing a date or time. Then on Monday this week I was approached by Lucas Brouwers, a journalist for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

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Folks, In response to our recent post about reject-when-you-mean-revise and submission-date massaging at Royal Society journals, Susie Maidment tweeted: Since then I have heard from several other sources — including Stuart Taylor, Head of Publishing and Commercial Director of the Royal Society — that these practices are widespread. Can anyone confirm this from their own experience? It needs to be stamped out wherever it happens.

Just a quick one for Matt Butler, who in a comment on the orignal postwrote: I just looked as well, and here’s what I saw: {.size-full .wp-image-6939 aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-6939” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“6939” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/10/06/biology-letters-does-trumpet-its-submission-to-acceptance-time/biology-letters/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/biology-letters.png”

If you haven’t already read the last post, please go do so before reading this one.

I’ve recently written about my increasing disillusionment with the traditional pre-publication peer-review process [post 1, post 2, post 3]. By coincidence, it was in between writing the second and third in that series of posts that I had another negative peer-review experience — this time from the other side of the fence — which has left me even more ambivalent about the way we do things.

Here’s a blast from the past: {.size-full .wp-image-6889 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“6889” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/10/02/2000ads-bizarre-fin-handed-compsognathus/2000ad-prog-8-back-cover-flesh-card-game-compsognathus/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2000ad-prog-8-back-cover-flesh-card-game-compsognathus.jpeg” orig-size=“521,344” comments-opened=“1”