Thomas Wolgast

Building software to fix academic publishing. Visit for my concept how to encourage reviewing and reduce low-quality submissions.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@fmy2kec It depends. For a quick prototype or standard CRUD, no need to review extensively. For a serious long-term project with real users, absolutely make sure you understand the code base. In the end, it boils down to developers understanding when to dive deep and when not.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@oliviawpy2023 Most important reviewing advice I read: review the paper the authors wrote, not the one you would have written. Don't remember where I found that though

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@Anonymanasensei @ReviewerBase Thanks! APCs are only paid for publications, not for submissions. And I'm afraid the reject and desk reject rates will rise in the next years...

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@Andrew_Akbashev @ReviewerBase The big risk that I see with payments only is that it will be a strong incentive to game the system with massive AI usage to create reviews and make money.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@Andrew_Akbashev Review incentives are one problem, but not the only one. @ReviewerBase is a general proposal for a non-profit reviewer database across the publishing system. It will contain reviewer expertise, review quality, etc, and a credit system (earn with reviews, pay for submissions).

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@IvanZupic Agree! AI mostly exposed existing flaws. Doesn't mean we can ignore the issues though. We have to redesign the system continuously to maximize benefit for humanity.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@nielstron When I don't understand the paper, I usually stop the review and recommend reject or major revision. I also clearly communicate exactly that.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@Michael_D_Moor I truly believe that high quantity of publications won't look impressive anymore. The opposite will be true.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@Mehradity @GurushaJuneja But I also believe these are not unsolvable problems. For example, dividing paper citations by the number of authors would easily solve the second issue. It would just be a new metric.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@rayendito True, the future will belong to those who keep learning and are able to produce work that would not have been produced by prompting alone.
High paper output, in contrast, will be a sign of low effort and quality.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@joelbot3000 Yeah, I don't understand how people still believe quantity of publications is a good look. The opposite is true now. Our academic system is just too slow to notice.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@iamOluwatobiOni Yeah, so much meaningless work can emerge from a single bad decision...

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

One problem with citations is that there are zero costs attached. We could simply cite each other massively to push citation counts, without any true value.
Also, one citation of a paper with N authors results in N citations in the stats, which does not make any sense. Bad incentives...

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@GurushaJuneja Yeah, we need to start actively designing the publishing system and its incentives. We can't expect a random system that emerged over decades to work indefinitely... my proposal to improve reviewing: @ReviewerBase

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@nikitathakur21 I'm quite sure every developer experiences some version of this. The only special thing about indie devs is that we made all these decisions ourselves, not some other team member 😄

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@sccarlson Yes, the peer review system starting failing years ago. We should actively redesign it and improve the incentives. I recently proposed @ReviewerBase, a reviewer database together with a credit system. Credits are earned for reviews and spent for submissions to discourage slop.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@sarahwiegreffe Submission quality is dropping. For journals as wel, in my experience.
I think we need general mechanisms to discourage low-quality submissions, considering how much work they create. I recently proposed a credit system: earn credits for reviews, pay for submissions.

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@JessicaHullman Congrats! Still, we should redesign the system I believe

[Thomas Wolgast @ThomasWolgast]

@AlexiGlad Why give up? I would very much prefer to repair and continuously re-design our publishing system. See https://t.co/cOXe4DOnnX for my proposal of a credit system.
Btw, "adoption" only works for some engineering papers, not all of science.