charlie d
Posts: 56 Joined: Oct. 2002
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If I may interject briefly, before disappearing again amidst calcium fluxes going the wrong way, I would say first of all that any attempt of ISCID and PCID to raise their standards and expand their horizons should not be pooh-poohed, but rather warmly encouraged, as far as I am concerned.
My feeling, if Micah you are still reading this, is that you should try to recruit as many as possible good-willed, open-minded-enough reviewers outside the restricted ID circle. People with recognized expertise in complexity/systems theory, mathematical biology, evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, whatever. I don't know, send out a mass e-mail to the relevant institutions/departments and see who volunteers, or ask ID-friendly people to recommend colleagues that may fit the bill. You can be very frank about the goals of the journal, how speculative it is supposed to be, and your outspoken interest in exploring teleology and design in biology. I bet you'll find more openness than you'd expect.
Then, I would have a 2-tier publication system, at least at the beginning: at the bottom level, I would keep the current model, however making it significantly more stringent. [Perhaps, soliciting open reviews on Brainstorms would be good, as long as people try to write complete, reasoned and self-standing critiques, applying real review standards, rather than just arguing about issues. Of course, the editors would still have the last word about any needed revision and final decision.]
The top tier would be made up of papers that at a first screening the editorial committee considers outstanding enough to pass peer review from the external experts mentioned above. Review of these manuscripts would be handled as in any "mainstream" journal. When accepted, these high-profile papers, no matter how rare, should be highlighted in the journal in some way as "top-of-the-line" material. At the end of the year (or more, if the papers are few), publish a list of the active reviewers.
Finally, and I am not sure this is already in place, you should have strict safeguards for both levels of submissions to ensure that all reviewers are anonymous to authors (since you people all know each other so well, it may be hard to be brutally honest about each other's work). This may of course end up bruising some egos, but I bet it would definitely raise quality.
Oh, and try to apply a consistent editing and layout format: some of the papers are really painful to read, they almost look like high-school essays.
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