What happens when you crowdsource peer review?

Chris Lee at arstecnica covers some academics who are trying it

When this approach was tested (with consent) on papers submitted to Synlett, it was discovered that review times went way down—from weeks to days. And authors reported getting more useful comments from their reviewers.

The forum is open, so as a reviewer, you can see comments accumulating, and you know the editor is going to close comments at some point soon. You are either going to do the job now or not do it at all—you can’t put the editor off for three weeks before deciding that you don’t have time.

Roberto Palloni: R and Acquiring Data from the Web

Roberto Palloni has a nice series of posts on using R to acquire data from the web

New blog series from Win-Vector LLC on R, Spark, and big data

The Win-Vector LLC data science blog is starting a new series on using Spark and R to handle big data.

Our goal

What we want to do with the “R and big data” series is:

  • Give a taste of some of the power of the R/Spark combination.

  • Share a “capabilities and readiness” checklist you should apply when evaluating infrastructure.

  • Start to publicly document R/Spark best practices.

  • Describe some of the warts and how to work around them.

  • Share fun tricks and techniques that make working with R/Spark much easier and more effective.

Circular supply chains and rising costs

About half of global paper is made from recycled fiber, making pulp and paper one of the few industries currently achieving some degree of circularity.

However, even this industry is facing supply constraints due to ever-growing paper demand. When demand for recycled fiber increases, either profit margins on recycled paper made from that fiber go down or the price of recycled paper goes up. Both results challenge the circular supply chain.

These dynamics suggest the difficulty of deploying circular supply chains in other industries. Initial promises of lower supply costs can be challenged by increased demand for recycled paper or by coordination costs in organizing the circular supply chain.