Why design a way of posting submitted papers for peer review like this? My original intention was to strengthen communication within the forum, because the purpose of our forum is exchange first and scholarship second; its primary significance is to enhance communication among students in the history of science, technology, and philosophy in the Beijing area. And if our communication is limited to those dozen or so session presentations on the final day, that is quite limited. I hope that academic exchange can already begin during the review process. Whether or not a submission is ultimately accepted as a session presentation, the student who submits it can still receive comments and suggestions from the reviewers—that is, the other students—and further exchange ideas with the students responsible for the review. This is unlike the usual call for papers on a forum, where in the end you are merely given a verdict of accepted or not accepted. If accepted, you get a ten-odd-minute speaking slot and a few minutes for discussion; the audience also has no chance to read your paper beforehand, and after listening in a hurry there is again no time for in-depth discussion. Basically, it is only a formality, with very little room for real exchange.
Our BBS, by contrast, is designed so that all students who submit papers have the chance to obtain the fullest possible exchange: you can first submit an anonymous draft and, after receiving feedback from reviewers, revise and improve it, while discussing it with the reviewers; once the draft is finalized, you can choose to make it fully public before the formal meeting so that the other participants also have ample time to read the article; and after the discussion at the conference venue, you can still return to the BBS and continue the exchange……
But in practice I have found that most students are not used to this approach. They do not want their papers made public too early, nor are they accustomed to registering and posting on the BBS themselves; as a result, the significance of this submission area is greatly reduced. Still, in any case, even if it is only for the sake of making the allocation of review work easier, we hope to keep this design in trial use……
Even if you do not want your paper to be made public to other students at any time, and do not want to participate in any online discussion, I still recommend that submitters spend a little time registering on the BBS and posting the manuscript themselves. The advantage of this is that when reviewers give comments, you will definitely be able to see them:
I have just added a “reply visible only to the original poster” function——when a submission is posted publicly, other students can openly comment and discuss it under the article. But if the submission is hidden and only the reviewers can see it, then the reviewers’ replies should not be made fully public either. So I have added this function (though it is still not entirely完善). When replying to an anonymous manuscript, please add the lzsee code to both ends of the reply text:
[lzsee] These words can only be seen by the original poster (and people with administrative privileges) [/lzsee]
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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