[Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of specimen record...

[Doug Yanega]

On 9/22/15 2:39 PM, WPCTWBUG at aol.com wrote:
> Doug,
> I appreciate your insights and the comments of many others on this 
> subject, I may not totally grasp the question, but here are a few 
> thoughts I have. As an author, I worry that open review will result in 
> no experts on my taxa reviewing my paper. One good critical review by 
> an expert is worth 100 weaker reviews by non-experts. In taxonomic 
> work, it is very difficult for someone who doesn't know the group to 
> identify the fundamental mistakes that slip into a paper. It 
> embarrasses the author and the journal. Personally I'd rather read a 
> good novel than read a technical paper that I know little about. How 
> many quality reviews would you expect from an open review system? When 
> editors ask me to review a paper because it is "my thing", I usually 
> will do so, but I won't seek out an abundance of papers rattling 
> around in need of review.
>
Thanks for pitching me a softball. ;-)

The answer is simple: it's called "auto notification". If you want to 
review only papers on Calliphoridae, you tell the review system software 
to send you a message whenever a paper with the keyword "Calliphoridae" 
has been submitted. *If every other calliphorid expert does the same 
thing*, then any paper you submit will be instantly made known to every 
other calliphorid expert, and you get exactly the reviewers you want, 
and you see only the papers for review YOU want to see. Easy as pie. 
Like I said, it's all about buy-in. If the other calliphorid experts get 
all huffy and refuse to participate, then the whole thing falls apart. 
We have to be nice and play together, is all. ;-)

Sincerely,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82