HOW IS ACADEMIC RESEARCH EVALUATED? There are many different ways to determine the impact of scientific research. One of the oldest and best established measures is to look at the Impact Factor (IF) of the academic journal where the research has been published. The IF is simply the average number of citations to recent articles published in such an academic journal. The IF is important because the reputation of a journal is also used as a proxy to evaluate the relevance of past research performed by a scientist when s/he is applying to a new position or for funding. So, if you are a scientist who publishes in high-impact journals (the big names) you are more likely to get tenure or a research grant. Several criticisms have been made to the use and misuse of the IF. One of these is the policies that academic journal editors adopt to boost the IF of their journal (and get more ads), to the detriment of readers, writers and science at large. Unfortunately, these policies promote the publication of sensational claims by researchers who are in turn rewarded by funding agencies for publishing in high IF journals. This effect is broadly recognized by the scientific community and represents a conflict of interests, that in the long run increases public distrust in published data and slows down scientific discoveries. Scientific discoveries should instead foster new findings through the sharing of high quality scientific data, which feeds back into increasing the pace of scientific breakthroughs. It is apparent that the IF is a crucially deviated player in this situation. To resolve the conflict of interest, it is thus fundamental that funding agents (a major driving force in science) start complementing the IF with a better proxy for the relevance of publishing venues and, in turn, scientists’ work. RESEARCH IMPACT IN THE ERA OF FORKING. A number of alternative metrics for evaluating academic impact are emerging. These include metrics to give scholars credit for sharing of raw science (like datasets and code), semantic publishing, and social media contribution, based not solely on citation but also on usage, social bookmarking, conversations. We, at Authorea, strongly believe that these alternative metrics should and will be a fundamental ingredient of how scholars are evaluated for funding in the future. In fact, Authorea already welcomes data, code, and raw science materials alongside its articles, and is built on an infrastructure (Git) that naturally poses as a framework for distributing, versioning, and tracking those materials. Git is a versioning control platform currently employed by developers for collaborating on source code, and its features perfectly fit the needs of most scientists as well. A versioning system, such as Authorea and GitHub, empowers FORKING of peer-reviewed research data, allowing a colleague of yours to further develop it in a new direction. Forking inherits the history of the work and preserves the value chain of science (i.e., who did what). In other words, forking in science means _standing on the shoulder of giants_ (or soon to be giants) and is equivalent to citing someone else’s work but in a functional manner. Whether it is a “negative” result (we like to call it non-confirmatory result) or not, publishing your peer reviewed research in Authorea will promote forking of your data. (To learn how we plan to implement peer review in the system, please stay tuned for future posts on this blog.) MORE FORKING, MORE IMPACT, HIGHER QUALITY SCIENCE. Obviously, the more of your research data are published, the higher are your chances that they will be forked and used as a basis for groundbreaking work, and in turn, the higher the interest in your work and your academic impact. Whether your projects are data-driven peer reviewed articles on Authorea discussing a new finding, raw datasets detailing some novel findings on Zenodo or Figshare, source code repositories hosted on Github presenting a new statistical package, every bit of your work that can be reused, will be forked and will give you credit. Do you want to do a favor to science? Publish also non-confirmatory results and help your scientific community to quickly spot bad science by publishing a dead end fork (Figure 1).

BROOKLYN, NY, March 20, 2017 – Authorea, the online collaborative document editor for researchers, has partnered with Rockefeller University Press (RUP), a leading publisher in the life sciences, to offer better collaboration and submission options for scientists. With this partnership, researchers writing on Authorea can submit directly to The Journal of Cell Biology, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, or The Journal of General Physiology with one-click submission.Authorea has integrated with a growing list of journals in the past year as it pushes to become the one-stop shop for researchers to write collaborative work and disseminate it widely. Researchers writing on Authorea can write in multiple markup languages (including rich text, Markdown, and LaTeX), can easily search, insert, and format citations, as well as automatically format their manuscripts for submission to leading publishers like RUP.The Rockefeller University Press provides scientists and the public with peer-reviewed results of groundbreaking research and vital news and information they can trust. With a strong commitment to quality and integrity, RUP strives to publish excellent science using the latest technologies. It carries out rigorous and fair peer-review, applying the highest standards of novelty, mechanistic insight, data integrity, and general interest. All three journals are led by active scientists in partnership with professional editors, ensuring that RUP represents the communities it serves.Rob O’Donnell, Director of Publishing Technologies at RUP, says: “RUP journals have allowed format-neutral submission for years, making the process fast and efficient for authors. We are happy to integrate with Authorea, who take that efficiency one step further by allowing authors to submit to JCB, JEM, or JGP directly from the authoring tool.”Josh Nicholson, Chief Research Officer at Authorea, says: “We want to make research more robust, open, and impactful. Rockefeller University Press publishes some of the most important journals and research in the world and we’re happy to partner with them to make the writing, submission, and ultimately publication process easier for researchers.”The partnership makes formatting and submitting extremely simple for researchers so that they spend less time formatting and more time on their essential work. With this integration,Press ContactAdyam Ghebre, Outreach, Authorea+1 (646) 598-9285About AuthoreaAuthorea is the online document editor for research and the place where scientific collaboration happens. Authorea is trusted worldwide by leading researchers writing and publishing content in every discipline, from astrophysics to zoology. The online document editor supports a wide range of markup languages and scientific integrations, including the most popular citation management, graphing, and visualization plugins. Authorea is on a mission to accelerate science through a superior web-based research-writing platform that delivers powerful tools and capabilities to researchers.

_This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature on 04 January 2016, DOI:10.1038/nature16171_ Magnetic fields play a role in almost all stages of stellar evolution . Most low-mass stars, including the Sun, show surface fields that are generated by dynamo processes in their convective envelopes . Intermediate-mass stars do not have deep convective envelopes , although 10% exhibit strong surface fields that are presumed to be residuals from the stellar formation process . These stars do have convective cores that might produce internal magnetic fields , and these might even survive into later stages of stellar evolution, but information has been limited by our inability to measure the fields below the stellar surface . Here we use asteroseismology to study the occurrence of strong magnetic fields in the cores of low- and intermediate-mass stars. We have measured the strength of dipolar oscillation modes, which can be suppressed by a strong magnetic field in the core , in over 3,600 red giant stars observed by . About 20% of our sample show mode suppression but this fraction is a strong function of mass. Strong core fields only occur in red giants above 1.1 solar masses (1.1), and the occurrence rate is at least 60% for intermediate-mass stars (1.6–2.0), indicating that powerful dynamos were very common in the convective cores of these stars.

Jingjing  Liang1*, Thomas W. Crowther2, Nicolas Picard3, Susan Wiser4, Mo Zhou1, Giorgio Alberti5, Ernst-Detlef Schulze6, A. David McGuire7, Fabio Bozzato8, Hans Pretzsch9, Sergio de-Miguel10,11, Alain Paquette12, Bruno Hérault13, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen14, Christopher B. Barrett15, Henry B. Glick16, Geerten M. Hengeveld17,17.5, Gert-Jan Nabuurs17,17.6, Sebastian Pfautsch18, Helder Viana19,20, Alexander C. Vibrans21, Christian Ammer22, Peter Schall22, David Verbyla23, Nadja Tchebakova24, Markus Fischer25,26, James V. Watson1, Han Y.H. Chen27, Xiangdong  Lei28, Mart-Jan Schelhaas17, Huicui Lu29, Damiano Gianelle30,31, Elena I. Parfenova24, Christian Salas32, Eungul Lee33, Boknam Lee34, Hyun Seok Kim34,35,36,37, Helge Bruelheide38,39, David A. Coomes40, Daniel Piotto41, Terry Sunderland42,43, Bernhard Schmid44, Sylvie Gourlet-Fleury45, Bonaventure Sonké46, Rebecca Tavani47, Jun Zhu48,49, Susanne Brandl9,49.5, Jordi Vayreda50,51, Fumiaki Kitahara52, Eric B. Searle27, Victor J. Neldner53, Michael R. Ngugi53, Christopher Baraloto54, Lorenzo Frizzera30, Radomir Bałazy55, Jacek Oleksyn56, Tomasz Zawiła-Niedźwiecki57, Olivier Bouriaud58,58.5, Filippo Bussotti59, Leena Finér60, Bogdan Jaroszewicz61, Tommaso Jucker40, Fernando Valladares62, Andrzej M. Jagodzinski56,63, Pablo L. Peri64,65,66, Christelle Gonmadje46,67,William Marthy68, Timothy O'Brien68, Emanuel H. Martin69, Andrew R. Marshall70,70.5, Francesco Rovero71, Robert  Bitariho72, Pascal A. Niklaus73,74, Patricia Alvarez-Loayza75, Nurdin Chamuya76, Renato Valencia77, Frédéric Mortier78, Verginia Wortel79, Nestor L. Engone-Obiang80, Leandro V. Ferreira81, David E. Odeke82, Rodolfo M. Vasquez83, Simon L. Lewis84,85, Peter B. Reich18,86

PREVIOUS “ASTROBIOLOGY” – NEXT “INTERACTIVE DRAKE EQUATION” With an estimated diameter of 93 billion light years and age of 13.7 billion years, our Universe is an astonishingly big place that’s been around for a very long time. When you look up, you only get a short glimpse at a fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars that populate our Galaxy (which in turn is one of hundreds of billions in the cosmos), but it’s enough to make you wonder: “Are we alone?” In the previous post we discussed the likelihood of the emergence of (intelligent) extraterrestrial life. Starting from the famous Drake Equation and using recent findings in astrophysics and some astrobiology arguments, we obtained a simple way to estimate N, the number of communicative civilizations in our Galaxy. This reduces to the product of the chance of emergence of intelligent life fi and the longevity L (in years) of a civilization’s communicative phase: N \approx \, {4}\, f_i \, L \,.

Are you comparing Google Docs vs Authorea?Choosing the right word processor for your documents is very important. While Google Docs and Authorea are similar in some ways, Google Docs is a great tool for writing general purpose drafts whereas Authorea is more appropriate if you are writing a scholarly manuscript, a student essay, a math heavy manuscript, a technical blog post, or a data-driven document. We listed here a few key comparison points that show how Google Docs and Authorea are different.

The current crisis of veracity in biomedical research is enabled by the lack of publicly accessible information on whether the reported scientific claims are valid. One approach to solve this problem is to replicate previous studies by specialized reproducibility centers. However, this approach is costly or unaffordable and raises a number of yet to be resolved concerns that question its effectiveness and validity. We propose to use an approach that yields a simple numerical measure of veracity, the R-factor, by summarizing the outcomes of already published studies that have attempted to test a claim. The R-factor of an investigator, a journal, or an institution would be the average of the R-factors of the claims they reported. We illustrate this approach using three studies recently tested by a replication initiative, compare the results, and discuss how using the R-factor can help improve the veracity of scientific research.

The 2016 Olympics have captivated the world -- records are breaking, medal counts are climbing, and nationalism is roaring! It's all very exciting. It should get even more exciting in Tokyo in four years time at the 2020 games when several new sports are scheduled to be introduced, including surfing, skateboarding, and... research! Okay, research definitely won't be included, but what if it were? How would each country fare? Here we look at research output vs. Olympic prowess on a per-country basis.

Social media is generally discouraged in science today. A recent article, "I'm a serious academic, not a professional Instagrammer" castigated scholars with active online social lives. Most advisors won't ask you to "tweet out our paper" or "write a blog post about our findings" and it's likely that you'd close Twitter or Reddit if your colleague or advisor walked by. Some conferences have taken it so far as to enforce a "no tweeting" policy. But social networking is here to stay and will likely become even more integrated into our lives and research.

At Authorea we're constantly thinking about how to make research writing easier, faster, and more robust from initial idea all the way through publication. Beyond stressing over making Authorea an impeccable experience and tool for researchers, we also like to think outside of the box for new innovative features that may not be on our immediate radar but are things we'd like to focus on at some point in the near future. Authorea X, if you like.Today, we'd like to ask for your feedback on one of the new ideas we're working on. We actively sought your feedback when we redesigned our new editor and would like to continue to involve researchers in the development of Authorea as much as possible. After all, we're building a great experience for you!In our latest brainstorming session, we discussed how we could help researchers improve their writing beyond what we're currently doing.  Specifically, how could we make the writing process one informed by data?  We identified a few key things we thought were important to the researcher based on requests as well as on our own observations and came up with what we're tentatively calling: "the Authorea Fitbit of research writing."  The Authorea Fitbit of researchWhile there are numerous metrics aimed at measuring the output of a researcher and the impact of their work \cite{Abbott_2010}, there is no easy way to track how a researcher is writing.  Some researchers have started manually keeping track of their writing progress on Twitter like the online #acwrimo community or the "thesis-writing tracker" by Achintya Rao of CERN but this is somewhat laborious and really just added work.  We think we can do better than a daily tally.  We can automatically track your writing patterns and share with you in a useful dashboard your typical behavior as well as your progress over a certain period of time. With such a system we would hope to be able to provide answers to the following:What time do I write most frequently at?  What are the most common words that I use?  How frequently do I write?How many words am I writing per day, per week, and per year?These are the things that we think researchers may like to know and thus we started quickly mocking up what this could look like on Authorea.  Our mocks are just initial sketches, heavily inspired by Github, and we hope, with your feedback, that they could become something very useful to researchers.  What would you track about your writing if you could? Tweet at us @authorea or leave a comment on Facebook or this article! 

This blog post is part of a series called IS ACADEMIA BROKEN? This is the second in the series and it discusses the overabundance of PhDs compared to the number of available academic openings. The first blog post, on the perils of doing interdisciplinary research early in your career, can be found here.

BROOKLYN, NY, March 28, 2017 – Authorea, an online collaborative editor for research documents, has partnered with the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to offer one-click direct submission of articles written on Authorea to a collection of leading earth and space science journals published by AGU.AGU, founded in 1919, is a not-for-profit professional organization representing 60,000 members in 137 countries. AGU publishes over 6,000 articles annually across its catalog of journals. Authorea has now integrated direct submission to the following AGU journals:• Earth and Space Science• Earth’s Future• Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems• GeoHealth• Geophysical Research Letters• Global Biogeochemical Cycles• Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems• Journal of Geophysical Research:        – Atmospheres        – Biogeosciences        – Earth Surface        – Oceans        – Planets        – Space Physics        – Solid Earth• Paleoceanography• Radio Science• Reviews of Geophysics• Space Weather• TectonicsAuthorea provides industry leading writing tools for researchers. Authors may write in multiple markup languages (including richtext, Markdown, and LaTeX), can search and insert citations from the web or from another reference manager, and can insert data sources and rich media into the document itself.The partnership streamlines the formatting and submission process for authors. Whereas before authors could spend hours or days formatting documents to meet submission requirements, Authorea automatically formats, packages, and sends submissions to the journal, greatly reducing the time cost of submission for authors.Josh Nicholson, Chief Research Officer at Authorea, says: “We’re excited to partner and work with AGU to make the editing and submission of research articles easier and more efficient for earth and space science researchers. AGU publishes some of the world’s most important research and we’re excited to integrate to make publishing more streamlined and effective.”Brooks Hanson, Director of Publications at AGU, says: “As a leader in scientific collaboration and innovative publishing, we’re always looking for ways to improve our publications, scientific collaboration, and the experience for our authors. In partnering with Authorea, AGU provides our authors and researchers with another tool to simplify the submission process allowing them to spend more time focused on their research and less on formatting submissions.”Press ContactAdyam Ghebre, Outreach, Authorea+1 (646) 598-9285About AuthoreaAuthorea is the online document editor for research and the place where scientific collaboration happens. Authorea is trusted worldwide by leading researchers writing and publishing content in every discipline, from astrophysics to zoology. The online document editor supports a wide range of markup languages and scientific integrations, including the most popular citation management, graphing, and visualization plugins. Authorea is on a mission to accelerate science through a superior web-based research-writing platform that delivers powerful tools and capabilities to researchers.

Dear Editor,Herein is my response to manuscript ID XXXXX, entitled [“Why Hermione was better than Harry in almost every respect”] [by Ronald Frump and colleagues] to the [Journal of Squirrel-Puppy Relationships].The authors present [insert general overview of research and key findings]. This research is [well-suited/not-suitable] for the remit of the journal.[Insert any comments regarding potential conflicts of interest, or about areas of relevant expertise that you feel you are lacking].I recommend [accept/minor revisions/major revisions/oblivion], pending x, y, and z.Basic reportingFiguresAre the figures legible, relevant, and integrated into the textDataAre the supporting data included in the manuscript or in a relevant repositoryAre the data presented in a way that is consistent with the FAIR principles (https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples)Experimental designWas the way in which the research was conducted the best way to answer the relevant questionsValidity of the findingsAre the conclusions supported by the resultsDo the results contribute to the research field, irrespective of whether they are ‘negative’ or a replication studyGeneral commentsIs the language used appropriate for a scientific publicationIs the structure appropriateAbstractIs the abstract concise, and does it convey the main research findingsAre any key points of context or conclusions missingIntroductionDoes this cover the published literature sufficientlyDoes it provide enough context in which to place the current researchAre any key citations missingIs the history of the research conveyed at all for historical significanceDoes it finish with a paragraph summarising the relevance of the current researchMaterials and methodsAre the methods clear and easy to followCan the methods be replicated if neededAre the source materials/data openly available, and is appropriate justification provided if notWere any statistical analyses applied performed appropriatelyResultsAre the results presented in a coherent fashionAre the results reported in a way that is supported by the dataDiscussionAre the new results placed into context of the relevant literatureIs a balanced argument providedAre the full implications of the new results discussed in sufficient detailConclusionsAre the conclusions supported by the resultsAre they concise and written in an impactful way (not over-embellished)Additional commentsAnything else you want to add that doesn’t fit aboveCongratulations to the authors on a great piece of work, and I look forward to seeing their research [published/rejected/re-written with all of the references to my own tangentially-relevant work included.]Sincerely,[Ralph Lauren]ReferencesAny additional papers you have cited within your report

Introduction to online markdownMarkdown is a markup language with a simple text formatting syntax. It is designed to provide basic formatting to text. Each piece of Markdown formatting has a corollary in HTML. This means that online Markdown is easy to write and maintain. Markdown was released in 2004 and is now one of the most popular markup languages on the web, powering GitHub (with Github-flavored Markdown or GFD) and many other sites.Advantages of online markdownOnline Markdown editors make it easy to write Markdown in the browser. Markdown can be integrated into apps for writing (as is the case with Authorea -- which supports inline Markdown). It can also be used as a standalone service for things like note-taking. Some of the most popular online markdown editors are:DillingerMinimalist Online Markdown EditorMarkableStackEditAuthoreaMarkdown for research writingAuthorea is an online document editor that has full Markdown support. Whether you want to write entirely in Markdown, or switch between markdown and richtext, you can do so in Authorea. If you're writing technical or scientific documents you'll find that Authorea can support your writing style. Authorea also renders the online Markdown environment beautifully to HTML5 in the browser. This makes documents into beautiful web pages.

ABSTRACT The very long, thin infrared dark cloud Nessie is even longer than had been previously claimed, and an analysis of its Galactic location suggests that it lies directly in the Milky Way’s mid-plane, tracing out a highly elongated bone-like feature within the prominent Scutum-Centaurus spiral arm. Re-analysis of mid-infrared imagery from the Spitzer Space Telescope shows that this IRDC is at least 2, and possibly as many as 8 times longer than had originally been claimed by Nessie’s discoverers, ; its aspect ratio is therefore at least 150:1, and possibly as large as 800:1. A careful accounting for both the Sun’s offset from the Galactic plane (∼25 pc) and the Galactic center’s offset from the (lII, bII)=(0, 0) position defined by the IAU in 1959 shows that the latitude of the true Galactic mid-plane at the 3.1 kpc distance to the Scutum-Centaurus Arm is not b = 0, but instead closer to b = −0.5, which is the latitude of Nessie to within a few pc. Apparently, Nessie lies _in_ the Galactic mid-plane. An analysis of the radial velocities of low-density (CO) and high-density (${\rm NH}_3$) gas associated with the Nessie dust feature suggests that Nessie runs along the Scutum-Centaurus Arm in position-position-velocity space, which means it likely forms a dense ‘spine’ of the arm in real space as well. No galaxy-scale simulation to date has the spatial resolution to predict a Nessie-like feature, but extant simulations do suggest that highly elongated over-dense filaments should be associated with a galaxy’s spiral arms. Nessie is situated in the closest major spiral arm to the Sun toward the inner Galaxy, and appears almost perpendicular to our line of sight, making it the easiest feature of its kind to detect from our location (a shadow of an Arm’s bone, illuminated by the Galaxy beyond). Although the Sun’s (∼25 pc) offset from the Galactic plane is not large in comparison with the half-thickness of the plane as traced by Population I objects such as GMCs and HII regions (∼200 pc; ), it may be significant compared with an extremely thin layer that might be traced out by Nessie-like “bones” of the Milky Way. Future high-resolution extinction and molecular line data may therefore allow us to exploit the Sun’s position above the plane to gain a (very foreshortened) view “from above" of dense gas in Milky Way’s disk and its structure.

PYTHAGORAS’ THEOREM a² + b² = c² _Pythagoras, 530 BC_ -------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ --------- LOGARITHMS logxy = logx + logy _John Napier, 1610_ CALCULUS $ f}{ t} = {h}$ _Newton, 1668_ LAW OF GRAVITY $F = G {r^2}$ _Newton, 1687_ THE SQUARE ROOT OF MINUS ONE i² = −1 _Euler, 1750_ EULER’S FORMULA FOR POLYHEDRA V − E + F = 2 _Euler, 1751_ NORMAL DISTRIBUTION $\psi(x) = {} e^{2~\rho^2}$ _C. F. Gauss, 1810_ WAVE EQUATION ${\partial t^2} = c^2 {\partial x^2}$ _J. D‘Ambert, 1746_ FOURIER TRANSFORM f(ω)=∫−∞∞f(x)e−2 π i x ωdx _J. Fourier, 1822_ NAVIER-STOKES EQUATION $\rho \left ( }{\partial t} + \cdot \nabla \right ) = - \nabla p + \nabla \cdot T + f$ _C. Navier, G. Stokes, 1845_ MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS ∇ ⋅ E = 0 _J. C. Maxwell, 1865_ $\nabla \times E = - {e} {\partial t}$ ∇ ⋅ H = 0 $\nabla \times H = {e} {\partial t}$ SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS dS ≥ 0 _L. Boltzmann, 1874_ PAYWALL RELATIVITY E = mc² _Einstein, 1905_ PAYWALL SCHRÖDINGER’S EQUATION $ \hbar {\partial t} \psi = H \psi$ _E. Schrödinger, 1927_ PAYWALL INFORMATION THEORY H = −∑p(x)logp(x) _C. Shannon, 1949_ PAYWALL CHAOS THEORY xt + 1 = k xt(1 − xt) _Robert May, 1975_ PAYWALL BLACK-SCHOLES EQUATION ${2} \sigma^2 S^2 {\partial S^2} + r S {\partial S} + {\partial t} - r V = 0$ _F. Black, M. Scholes, 1990_ PAYWALL EULER’S TRANSFORMATION $^\infty (-1)^n a_n = ^\infty (-1)^n {2^{n+1}}$ _Euler, 1755_ PAYWALL RUSSELL’S PARADOX Let R = {x ∣ x ∉ x}, then R ∈ R ⇔ R ∉ R _Russell, 1902_ GÖDEL’S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM G(x):=¬Prov(sub(x, x)) ⇒ PA ⊢ G(⌜G⌝) ↔ ¬Prov(⌜G(⌜G⌝)⌝) _Gödel, 1931_

The peer review process is a pillar of modern research, verifying and validating the ever-increasing output of academia. While the academic community agrees that some process of review is necessary to ensure the quality of published research, not everybody agrees on the best approach. In particular, doubts have been cast on the current peer review process: most journals select and assign one anonymous referee (few journals assign two or more) who is in charge of reviewing the manuscript and recommending it for publication or rejection. The argument is that the current peer review system is becoming inadequate. Here’s an incomplete list of issues: - Research is increasingly collaborative, complex, and specialized. Thus, it is less likely that one or a few referees can have the necessary expertise (and time) to properly handle many modern articles. Simply put, THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF AUTHORS PER PAPER HAS BEEN STEADILY INCREASING IN THE LAST FEW DECADES, WHILE THE NUMBER OF REFEREES PER PAPER HAS NOT. - “Publication pressure” means there is a growing number of papers to referee. This need can not be easily matched since scholars, who need to constantly publish and engage in the “funding race”, HAVE LESS TIME TO BE DEDICATED TO COMMUNITY SERVICE (in a “single referee” system the review process is very time consuming). - Given the anonymous nature of peer reviewing manuscripts, RESEARCHERS WHO VOLUNTEER THEIR VALUABLE TIME AND KNOWLEDGE DON’T GET RECOGNITION for contributing. - Cases of peer-review scams, mostly from predatory open access publishers, have grown in number over recent years. A number of journals, exploiting the publication pressure climate, accept and publish articles with LITTLE OR NO PEER REVIEW. - Similarly, there are reports of fraud in which authors review their own or close friends’ manuscripts to give favorable reviews .

In order to estimate the number of technological civilizations that might exist among the stars, in 1961 Frank Drake proposed a simple equation. Below you can play with an interactive plot showing the number N of communicative civilizations in the Galaxy as function of their average longevity L. You can change the values of the various parameters using the sliders.