Comments on: Hitler attempts to navigate the peer-review process

By: Ian Mulvany

Ian Mulvany — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 11:01:00 +0000

This is a significant problem, and for early stage researchers in the life sciences getting a publication in a top tier journal can make or break their career. I’m working on developing a new journal that will balance very high impact with a respectful editorial process. We are going to have one active researcher who will act to coordinate all the reviews, and return a single letter to the author. There will also be a first round quick submission where we hop to be able to give a decision within a few days, in order not to waste the time of authors. We are backed by the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Centre. Oh, yeah, we are also going to be publishing CC-BY, pushing the full XML journal content to as many places as possible (pubmed central, github, anywhere we can think really). Our managing editor is Mark Patterson who used to run PLoS, you can check it out at http://www.elifesciences.org, open for submissions in a few weeks :)

By: franko

franko — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:40:00 +0000

man, hitler is even hilarious ranting about stuff i have ZERO knowledge about or interest in. i don’t care what the haters say — i’m always good with a good “pissed-off hitler” video.

By: Roel Siebrand

Roel Siebrand — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:19:00 +0000

You have a point. Thankfully there’s a zillion things I like but this is getting boring.

By: Maggie Koerth-Baker

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:48:00 +0000

Actually, from my experience, the meme made more people aware of the film and how great it is.

By: mzed

mzed — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:36:00 +0000

I’m not convince that this meme diminishes the original film, although I do agree that it’s quite stale. The director seems amused:
http://www.vulture.com/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html

By: mesocosm

mesocosm — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:44:00 +0000

I may be in the minority here, but I thought Der Untergang was not only a great film, but an important and culturally significant one. I think it’s a shame that it’s become a big ol’ joke, and a long-stale one at that.

But hey – Hitler! It’s hilarious I guess.

By: Guido

Guido — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:20:00 +0000

Why?

Stop watching them. It was hilarious, I enjoyed it, as a scientist used to hear these rants.

The world is full of stuff you don’t like. Life is short, why not devote the time to things you love and let everybody else have fun?

By: mzed

mzed — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:07:00 +0000

Yeah, if I ever meet that “reviewer #3″ in person we’re going to have words.

By: Shinkuhadoken

Shinkuhadoken — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:07:00 +0000

What? You mean scientific discoveries aren’t determined by a prefabricated leftist political agenda in a attempt to secure meaningless government expenditures at the taxpayers’ expense to suppress capitalism and religious beliefs?

Could Fox News have lied to me?

By: Roel Siebrand

Roel Siebrand — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000

I think I’m quite done with this now. As far as I’m concerned the best one was done by LuckyTV for Dutch television and I think, but not quite sure, the first too. Can we stop now?

By: kateling

kateling — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000

The number of peer reviewers depends on the journal. All the major journals in my field use only one referee, though fancy ones like Nature use three.

Three would be good for the science, but having all papers reviewed by three people would triple an already significant time burden.