Related papers: An objective criterion for evaluating new physical…
Scientific evaluation is a determinant of how scientists, institutions and funders behave, and as such is a key element in the making of science. In this article, we propose an alternative to the current norm of evaluating research with…
In physics the value of a theory is measured by its agreement with experimental data. But how should the physics community gauge the value of an emerging theory that has not been tested experimentally as of yet? With no reality check, a…
One of the virtues of peer review is that it provides a self-regulating selection mechanism for scientific work, papers and projects. Peer review as a selection mechanism is hard to evaluate in terms of its efficiency. Serious efforts to…
Because there are similarities between the evaluation of alternative stories in criminal trials and the evaluation of scientific theories, scholars have looked to literature in epistemology and the philosophy of science for insights on the…
In computer science, conferences and journals conduct peer review in order to decide what to publish. Many have pointed out the inherent weaknesses in peer review, including those of bias, quality, and accountability. Many have suggested…
Traditional closed peer review systems, which have played a central role in scientific publishing, are often slow, costly, non-transparent, stochastic, and possibly subject to biases - factors that can impede scientific progress and…
Program review in the physical sciences may benefit from a framework within which to quantitatively discuss the scientific merit of a proposed theoretical program of research, and to assess the scientific merit of a particular theoretical…
The familiar theories of physics have the feature that the application of the theory to make predictions in specific circumstances can be done by means of an algorithm. We propose a more precise formulation of this feature --- one based on…
This is a Commentary in $Physics~Today$ on the novel review process developed by the biology journal $eLife$, with the suggestion that it be adopted by physics journals.
Sir, We write as senior scientists about a problem vital to the scientific enterprise and prosperity. Nowadays, funding is a lengthy and complex business. First, universities themselves must approve all proposals for submission. Funding…
In a series of essays, beginning with this article, we are going to develop a new formulation of micro-phenomena based on the principles of reality and causality. The new theory provides with us a new depiction of micro-phenomena assuming…
Scientific publishing is in a transition between the old paper-bound, static forms and the new electronic media with its interactive, dynamic possibilities. This takes place in the context of imploding library budgets and exploding magazine…
Peer review is a cornerstone of modern scientific endeavor. However, there is growing consensus that several limitations of the current peer review system, from lack of incentives to reviewers to lack of transparency, risks to undermine its…
In the paper, the authors elaborate some recently published research concerning the originality of artworks in terms of self-organization in the complex systems physics. It has been demonstrated that the originality issue such conceived…
A method is presented for evaluating authors on the basis of citations. It assigns to each author a citation score which depends upon the number of times he is cited, and upon the scores of the citers. The scores are found to be the…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
We acuminate the idea of a final theory of physics in order to analyze its logical implications and consequences. It is argued that the rationale of a final theory is the principle of sufficient reason. This implies that a final theory of…
When a mountaineer is ascending one of the great peaks of the Himalayas she knows that an entirely new vista awaits her at the top, whose ramifications will be known only after she gets there. Her immediate goal though, is to tackle the…
Science education at all levels is currently undergoing dramatic changes to its curricula and developing assessments for these new curricula is paramount. We have used the basis of many of these new changes (scientific practices,…
The physical models of a successful unified theory about the Universe must operate in different phase of matter evolution and different fields of physics. The attempts to build such wide range theory as a bunch of theories developed for…