Workflow - Publishing Modification Comments

Should the discussions concerning a suggested modification be published? If so, when and how should they be published?

In some academic workflows, discussions generated by publications are published as commentary articles, co authored by the participants. This can be done for a variety of reasons, such as incentivizing commenting, increasing communal participation and inclusivity, etc. In other workflows, ensuing discussions are left unpublished. It is important for the scientonomic workflow to clearly articulate how and when, if at all, the discussions on suggested modifications should be published.

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Hakob Barseghyan and Jamie Shaw in 2019. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted answers to the question can be summarized as follows:

• The discussions concerning a suggested modification are to be published once a communal verdict is available. The discussions are to be published in the journal as special commentary articles co-authored by all participants of the discussion or in special edited collections.
• Scientonomic knowledge is best advanced by:

1. documenting the body of accepted communal knowledge knowledge in an online encyclopedia;
2. scrutinizing this accepted knowledge, identifying its flaws, and formulating open questions at seminars, conferences, publications, and other in-person or online formats;
3. publishing journal articles that propose modifications to our current knowledge and documenting these suggestions;
4. evaluating the suggested modifications with the goal of reaching a communal consensus and changing the respective encyclopedia pages when a verdict is reached.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	22 December 2019	The publication of Shaw and Barseghyan (2019) is and indication of the acceptance of the question.	Yes

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Publishing Modification Comments (Shaw-Barseghyan-Yan-2019)	The discussions concerning a suggested modification are to be published once a communal verdict is available. The discussions are to be published in the journal as special commentary articles co-authored by all participants of the discussion or in special edited collections.	2019

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Accepted Theories

According to our records, no theory on this topic has ever been accepted.

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2019-0002	Scientonomy	22 December 2019	Accept that the discussions concerning a suggested modification are to be published once a communal verdict is available. The discussions are to be published in the journal as special commentary articles co-authored by all participants of the discussion or in special edited collections.	Accepted	The decision was made during the 2023 scientonomy workshop. Much of the discussions on this modification concerned the actual format of the “special commentary articles” and “special edited collections” suggested as options for publications would be. Paul Patton suggested micro-papers that could accompany each modification (one discussion paper per modification), whereas Izzy Friesen, Rebecca Muscant, and Grace Shan were supportive of unified papers in a “compilation” format (one discussion paper per workshop). The possibility of doing both concurrently was floated by Spenser Borrie. Concerns about the commentary articles/edited collections waned once it was clarified that subheadings would be present in any compilation paper, ensuring that modifications and their authors would receive adequate attention. Establishing a clear schedule and framework for such a compilation was of great importance to all attendees at the meeting, and additionally, Hakob Barseghyan suggested a special numbering system for these publications to separate them from peer-reviewed articles. It was also agreed that the first author of such a paper would be whoever was in charge of taking notes, with all other commentators listed as co-authors. The modification was accepted almost unanimously.	25 February 2023

Current View

In Scientonomy, the accepted answers to the question are Publishing Modification Comments (Shaw-Barseghyan-2019) and Scientonomic Workflow (Barseghyan et al.-2016).

Publishing Modification Comments (Shaw-Barseghyan-2019) states: ""

Scientonomic Workflow

Scientonomic Workflow (Barseghyan et al.-2016) states: "Scientonomic knowledge is best advanced by:

1. documenting the body of accepted communal knowledge knowledge in an online encyclopedia;
2. scrutinizing this accepted knowledge, identifying its flaws, and formulating open questions at seminars, conferences, publications, and other in-person or online formats;
3. publishing journal articles that propose modifications to our current knowledge and documenting these suggestions;
4. evaluating the suggested modifications with the goal of reaching a communal consensus and changing the respective encyclopedia pages when a verdict is reached."
   
   The key stages of the workflow are:

• Pose Questions: The goal of this stage is to scrutinize the current state of the scientonomic theory and our knowledge of scientific change and identify as many open questions as possible. The annual seminar on scientonomy hosted by the University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is currently the main venue facilitating this stage of the workflow.
• Suggest Modifications: The goal of this stage is to advance our knowledge of scientific change by proposing modifications to our current body of knowledge. These suggested modifications are published and properly documented. These modifications are currently published in the Journal of Scientonomy but, in principle, they can be published in any journal which makes use of the scientonomic mechanism of modifications. Once a modification is published, this encyclopedia documents that suggestions and invites experts to review it.
• Evaluate Modifications: The goal of this stage is to assess the suggested modifications and decide which of them are acceptable and which are not. This is done by the community of scientonomists on the respective discussion pages of this encyclopedia. If a consensus emerges, the fate of the modification is documented. If a modification causes disagreement among scientonomists, it becomes a topic of discussion during scientonomic workshops, which aim at bridging the gaps between opposing parties and arriving at consensus.
• Document Changes: The goal of this stage is to document all the changes in our communal body of knowledge. If a modification is considered acceptable by the community, then the respective articles of this encyclopedia are modified to reflect that change. If a modification is considered unacceptable, then the respective verdict is documented for that modification.

The primary role of this encyclopedia in the scientonomic workflow is to document the current state of scientonomic knowledge, trace all suggested modifications, and list open questions.

Here is an outline of the main stages of the scientonomic workflow:

This workflow gives researchers a simple way of knowing where the community stands on different topics, i.e. what theories it currently accepts, what open questions it tries to answer, what modifications have been proposed and how they have been assessed. It ensures that our communal knowledge is advanced in a piecemeal and transparent fashion:

• Piecemeal: modifications to the communal mosaic are suggested one by one, which allows for a sober critical evaluation of these suggestions by the community.
• Transparent : suggested modifications and their evaluations are properly documented, so that there is no mystery as to whether, when, or why a certain modification was or wasn't accepted.

The workflow is scalable, as it can - in principle - be implemented in other fields of digital humanities and beyond.

Related Topics

This question is a subquestion of Scientonomic Workflow.