Chuck Dinerstein, MD, argues the case:
Scientists have written to discuss the difficulties with peer-review, an admittedly imperfect system. But in many cases, peer-review is a necessary unremunerated side hustle for a young academic, not a due diligence vetting. Journal publication is a large, global business. Elsevier recorded $9.8 billion in revenue in the US in 2019, a profit of 34% to their parent company. You would think that if a fraction of that money, say 1%, which is about $30 million, could be redirected at paying for peer-review, we might get a better quality product. Perhaps not. But turning our attention only to peer-review assigns no culpability to the editors. That is why increasingly, even the best of our medical journals are acting more like platforms, protected by Section 230 of the Telecommunications act, than as trustworthy sources of research and clinical information.
Chuck Dinerstein, “Scientific Journals Are Now Like Facebook” at American Council on Science and Health
Facebook is protected under Section 230 in the United States, which is probably the reason why it and so many other big social media firms are happy to be domiciled there. But medical journals?
Hey, Lancet! Surgisphere…
We’ll know it’s really bad when many of them start to remind us of Twitter…