Comments on: The Paradox of Persistence in an Attention Economy

By: Successful Crowdsourcing Requires Feedback « The Scholarly Kitchen

Successful Crowdsourcing Requires Feedback « The Scholarly Kitchen — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:41:57 +0000

[...] Conversely, popularity is strongly associated with productivity. The more attention you create, the more likely you are to contribute. And the more you contribute, the more likely you are to build a fan base who track your future submissions. A feedback loop thus motivates the successful and discourages the rest. Moreover, persistence doesn’t seem pay as a long-term strategy, according to an earlier study of YouTube…. [...]

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:36:29 +0000

The observation in this study seems to validate the fact that novelty beats craft a fair amount of the time. Something new that captures imagination (in popular culture) or that reveals new findings (in science) beats something that is familiar, known, or customary, no matter how well-crafted.

Novelty drives early success, craft can’t sustain it. Nothing novel about that!

By: Bora Zivkovic

Bora Zivkovic — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:45:35 +0000

Correction #1: 6 out of 7 PLoS journals have the entire system in place for comments, notes, ratings, trackbacks, and article-level metrics. The 7th is coming soon.

Correction #2: the nasty myth that PLoS ONE peer-review is “lite” needs to be eradicated before it spreads too far out – check out what our editors say about the reviewing process in the interviews: http://everyone.plos.org/tag/interview/
Not just that the peer-review at PLoS ONE is as rigorous as anywhere, but many feel that the elimination of the “novelty and earth-shakiness” criterion actually makes the peer-review more rigorous than in GlamourMagz.

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:07:37 +0000

Of the PLoS journals, only PLoS One allows the post-publication star rating system. Perhaps it is because PLoS One conducts only “lite” editorial review and not full peer-review.

One also needs to register with PLoS in order to rate articles and I wonder if this is to prevent authors gaming the system by rating their own articles multiple times.

By: Jo VanEvery

Jo VanEvery — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:58:09 +0000

I wonder what these post-publication evaluation tools will do to the ranking of journals. Current rankings are based on citations which, of necessity, take a while to percolate through the system.

Readership of individual articles could not be measured. Now that many journals are online, and many academics access articles electronically this changes.

Do we value reading as impact? Or must it result in citations?

And with the ease of searching electronic journals for relevant articles, do readership (and citation) patterns shift?

If the point of publishing is to communicate with peers (which I agree it is), it is this reach that is important. New tools seem to offer the possibility of measuring reach more quickly and adjusting publishing strategies accordingly.

By: Ted Freeman

Ted Freeman — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:36:28 +0000

Thanks. I didn’t realize any publishers were doing this. It will be interesting to see how many follow PLoS’s lead. Other than the most-downloaded usage reports that a good many sites are publishing these days (have been for many years), currently I don’t see much post-publication evaluation being supported by STM journal publishers, certainly not of the explicit, interactive kind. I’m perfectly willing to be corrected, but it still seems much more the exception than the rule.

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:55:32 +0000

Ted, you seem to be focused on a single detail in a long series of examples intended on illustrating that publishers have adopted post-publication evaluation tools, similar to YouTube.

But to cite the example I was thinking of when I wrote that sentence, please look at an article published in PloS One, e.g.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004901

By: Ted Freeman

Ted Freeman — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:39:35 +0000

Interesting post. Would you please cite as many examples as you can of peer-reviewed journal sites where publishers allow “readers to rate articles by stars”? Thanks in advance.