> > You had to explain everything and make sure to refence the Big boys you were close to
> That sounds problematic
Bingo, it is problematic. It's part of how "the Big boys" get their academic and compensation (investment in their firms) rewards. You have to play the publish-or-perish, paper rank game to get ahead and stay ahead in academia, and this leads to all sorts of problems. Authors don't want to question "the Big boys" because that leads to their papers not getting published because the "the Big boys" and their bootlicker wannabes are the reviewers and they will exact their tribute. Make it to "the Big boys" club and now you're a gatekeeper and now you're also responsible for perpetuating this system.
It's why Nature-style peer review needs to become a thing of the past.
I'm not saying that "popular" (for a value of "popular" that involves peers at large, not the public at large) peer review is / will be without problems. But it seems to me that it will -at least for a while- be less corruptible.
Yeah, this is a hill I will die on. I love researching, but once I grab my PhD I do not plan to push to journals/conferences unless it is requested in a job. It just holds no meaning and I'm tired of pretending it does. Perpetuating the system harms my fellow researchers, kills innovation, and just kicks the growing can down the road.
The other hill I will die on is that we shouldn't refer to journal/conference publishing as "peer review." This is one form of peer review, but there are MANY more. And as far as I'm concerned, 3 randos that briefly skim my paper in an adversarial setting (zero sum) looking to reject works barely constitutes peer review. Peer review is what happens when your peers read your work, test it, build upon it, replicate it, etc. We need to stop this language because it helps no one.
I love when this happens tbh, but it is rather rare. Often I can tell that a paper was rejected for dumb reasons and that gives me a good signal to actually read it.
> That sounds problematic
Bingo, it is problematic. It's part of how "the Big boys" get their academic and compensation (investment in their firms) rewards. You have to play the publish-or-perish, paper rank game to get ahead and stay ahead in academia, and this leads to all sorts of problems. Authors don't want to question "the Big boys" because that leads to their papers not getting published because the "the Big boys" and their bootlicker wannabes are the reviewers and they will exact their tribute. Make it to "the Big boys" club and now you're a gatekeeper and now you're also responsible for perpetuating this system.
It's why Nature-style peer review needs to become a thing of the past.
I'm not saying that "popular" (for a value of "popular" that involves peers at large, not the public at large) peer review is / will be without problems. But it seems to me that it will -at least for a while- be less corruptible.