The Cricinfo story on the running England-South Africa Test battle had an old irritant today:

Nevertheless, it was the change of pace that did for Duminy in the end, as Swann entered the attack in the 109th over, and true to his reputation, made an immediate impact. On the first day, he had needed three deliveries to remove another South African left-hander, Prince – this time he struck with his fifth ball, a sharply spinning offbreak that Collingwood snaffled at slip in a near-replica dismissal.

Of course, there are several irregularities here; the comma in the very first line should be after “and” and not before; that’s highly ridiculous though understandable since the writer must have been in a hurry on a news website. Again I would have opted for a semicolon after Prince, but that in itself might turn out to be just my peculiarity. However, what starts getting me is a needless use of the word “snaffle”; I saw the dismissals, and at the most the bowler snaffled the batsman overall, as Duminy was not looking particularly uncomfortable. To suggest that the catch itself was a snaffled one suggests the reflexes to be quicker than they were required in this case; the catch was a good one, but it was not something out of the ordinary, and if not bountiful, Collingwood did have ample time to take it, considering him to be an international-level cricketer. What irritated me highly though was that “near-replica dismissal.”

Along with its counterpart “exact replica,” I am almost dead tired and flogged and rinsed of replicas completely. The two dismissals, that of Ashwell Prince and JP Duminy, were exactly similar (note “exactly” is fine here); they were carbon copies! How to suggest that as near replicas beats me first of all, besides the further thought that what exactly is a “near replica”? The Oxford University Press says replica is “a very good or exact copy of sth”; so then is a near replica something which seems to have some resemblances to something when you can stretch your imagination a bit? To say nothing that here anyway they were perfect copies, not even good copies, so why this generous usage of words, and why not just “replica”, or to make your point sharper, “replica of a/the dismissal” (“replica” as noun, which always is preferable to me—avoids all confusion).

Of course, terms like “exact replica” are further off the mark, especially if you now move to Webster’s from Oxford, which says “replica” to be “a copy exact in all details”! So is an “exact replica” an “exact exact copy”? What exactly?

The subset of users can be selected (a) using k-most similar users or (b) a set of users whose similarity values are above a certain predefined threshold.

changed to

The subset of users can be selected choosing (a) the k most similar users or (b) users with similarity values above a certain predefined threshold.

There were multiple problems with this sentence; first “using,” even if it would have been a proper word, was inside the first condition, and thus the second condition was disconnected from the clause that introduced the conditions. It was also a bit not clear in the sentence whether the sets have similarity values or the users, till you looked at the subject/verb agreement: users … are above. Of course, logic would also dictate the same, but why should the reader stop or hesitate anywhere? “k-most” was almost as good as “the k most”, but then we don’t usually say “three-most ordinary articles”; we say “the three most ordinary articles” or “the three most-ordinary articles” (which I would prefer, but somehow is rarely used). I made the “k” italic since it’s a varible, but that’s OK; different people have different conventions, just follow one within one work. I would still debate whether “certain … threshold” doesn’t amount to redundance, but I would leave the author at peace here: maybe his book would be 30% of what it was originally if I start paring down the redundancies!

This one is an extremely common usage, and too often overlooked by editors too.

The liberal minimalist approach is exemplified by the Canadian political philosopher, Joseph Carens.

changed to

The liberal minimalist approach is exemplified by the Canadian political philosopher Joseph Carens.

If there is only one Canadian political philosopher to date, the apposition marked by comma is right. But there can’t be and there is not one. Delete the comma, fast, fast! This is a too common mistake by authors and one that sometimes could lead to an unintended different sense to a reader.

… the liberal communitarian is inconsistent. If we ought to focus on the community which holds the strongest moral value for the individual, why suppose this to be the nation state or even the nation?

changed to

… the liberal communitarian is inconsistent. If we ought to focus on the community as holding the strongest moral value for the individual, why suppose this to be the nation state or even the nation?

I do not prefer to leave “which” in non-restricted sense. But a closer look immediately reveals to us that the concern here is with the focus on a community when a community is being held as the entity to which an individual owes strongest moral duties [as opposed to humanity]. So there is a restriction (and so of course we cannot put a coma before “which”), but not on the community: hence replacing “which” with “that” would change the meaning altogether. “that” would lead one to think that we are talking of different types of communities and it is the community holding the strongest moral value we ought to focus upon and not other communities. But we want to say here any community but within the hypothesis that it holds the strongest moral value. In fact, that’s why the argument contained in the last phrase comes about: if we ought to focus on community in such and such a case, then why only nation state? Why not any? The hidden “any” in the first phrase comes out thus in the form of a question, which was all along self-evident, in the latter phrase.

Some regions were more vulnerable to state action than others. This was certainly the case for Georgia’s ethnic regions, which, at the collapse of the Soviet Union, lost a protector in Moscow.

changed to

Some regions were more vulnerable to state action than others. This was certainly the case for Georgia’s ethnic regions, which, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, lost a protector in Moscow.

Certainly, the loss of patronage from the USSR occurred “at” its disintegration. But the loss was not an independent event, not a coincidence, but caused due to the main event. And this loss was permanent, continuing till present history.

I am not suggesting here to blow up and dismantle the whole peer review system dead and buried, but the mentality that if something’s been published, better in prestigious journals, it’s something news-worthy at the zero end of the spectrum and something to turn the whole research direction into new grounds at the far zero end of the spectrum.

To start with the whole intent of the process, it happens just because you have an intermediate being called the editor of a journal, who is mostly a half-baked being, even if very well cooked. The editor doesn’t have expertise in what he intends to cull, publish, or reject: he depends on his political expertise in recruiting reviewers who are, in the ideal scenario, unbiased and very knowledgeable. The first thing here is that now too much of the status of an article’s publication-worthiness depends on how “acceptable” it is to those reviewers: it might be a radical new idea that others might not be willing to accept at all, clashing with their own deeply and longly held beliefs; it might be an idea that goes against the prevalent practice and dares to ask the wrong questions, wrong not simply because they are audacious but also because they might lead to losses for those corporations who are funding the research bodies on whose grants the reviewers are spending lives and the very same journals are running! The second thing is that too often and too soon the editor’s aim becomes to garner enough positive reviews, so that s/he can justify an article’s inclusion. This is especially true for journals in the mid-prestige range, because they have to fight for enough interesting articles, not being bombarded like the high-prestige ones. (Not to mention the difficulty in getting the “experts” when you’re a low-prestige journal!) Even taking the case of books and while sending out the manuscript for review, and if you really want some kind of a book on that subject in your catalog, or you want to just have a first-mover advantage, you just want three positive reviews, or two out of three!

To continue with the process itself, there’s been a lot said, a lot unsaid. If it’s a niche area, to find the reviewers is a difficult business. You ask the author, and then contacting his suggested ones is hardly a blind process, is it? Even if you don’t contact the author, more often than not he would know who all could be the reviewers and how exactly he needs to politick! I remember myself scouting reviewers for a book on control engineering, but where the author touched on a curious mixture of topics, based on which he himself taught at a prestigious university, but which were not to be found at other universities: the manuscript seemed interesting, but here the reviewer has not only to see whether what’s written is good, but also whether it’s “likely to be useful for students and faculty,” that is, marketable. A solution here would be getting the manuscript reviewed by students of that particular discipline, rather than any so-called manuscript. They will be unbiased as long as anonymity is followed, will be keen as it will enhance their knowledge plus it’s like judging someone so early on (and human beings love judging, oh yes they do), and will be enthusiastic over the whole process and make fine science men and women themselves later on with this exposure. But the same thing doesn’t work elsewhere: especially where students have always thought only what they’ve been taught!

Most science students scoff at things they have been taught to scoff at: that’s the most simple explanation that comes to mind. Most philosophy and even other humanities students will soon flow into different isms, testing themselves how well have they understood each one. And forget that while a work might use references as supporting evidence and while they themselves might support a work with referential arguments as some kind of hallowed precints to question which a layman will tremble, still that work cannot use them as props. Also, what if I base my article upon a research that I could do and of course the students have no access to? The reviewer’s work is anyway not to question the researcher’s veracity of assertions: s/he assumes that the said research was indeed carried out. S/he only has to scrutinize the results that I infer from my observations: what I observed is sanctified beyond the pale of doubt just by my signing on the dotted paper in a legal framework that I did so. If I did not, I will be culpable. Yes. But how many times is that done? Isn’t it again one of the failures of the peer review process?

Last but not least is the whole problem of bloating yourself on citations: publish as often as you can, especially in high-impact journals, and that’s the goal of writing, because that then leads you to more money, higher status, legendarity. The media and the periodicity of these journals don’t help either. Fickle researches published in a high-prestige and high-impact factor journal are standard news items in tabloids; and the journals themselves have to churn out something or the other in an issue, they can’t be just not publishing occasionally! Immortality is not a valued item now; the world loves its schmaltzy glitz. And in journals anyway it was never an item of consideration. Breakthroughs seem very common now; we are tired, and we need a constant reflux of them; and we do that awarding more PhDs, reporting every new research that told us how womens were found out to be wired differently, and not saying anything based on our instincts but finding a proof for everything since it’s a world we know which laughs when you don’t have anything to back up what you said—even if you were right! And then research itself getting funded by corporations investing large amounts of money into getting a brand down people’s throat: how poorer can the imagination get?

The recent Scott Reuben fraud (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-medical-madoff-anesthestesiologist-faked-data) started me on this. A problem lies also outside of the immediate medical framework: the publishing world. The whole process of “acquisitions editor” and “development editor”—people with half-baked knowledge mostly—who run the show. The show might indeed be very profitable for the publishing companies themselves, but the deplorable fact remains that publishing has not even remained market-oriented but has become self-generating, self-consuming.

Market does not mean “library” to me: where you have taken the university representative in your pocket through widely adopted questionable means, and then the library of that particular university calls in for some dozens of that book, a manuscript even its author wouldn’t want since his/her whole purpose was to get a citation somewhere, preferably as in a single-authored book, or otherwise anyhow. Market means the researchers in case of academic books (the lay public also when it’s a question of many humanities books, or the case of higher education books, the “retail”). Publishing has become a complete benzene ring in itself: the co-authors cozy up, sign even when they have had nothing—in anticipation of future such deals which will benefit the other; the agents just want an already widely-cited author, some “expert”; and the publisher just wants a good blurb first to be able to make attractive flyers and start selling—to libraries (and buying the reps). Nobody bothers about the contents: if there is a demand from a certain section on books on Sri Lanka, just about any author is welcome, and you would publish him/her. The retail is not a good example either: Your best dc machines book is not selling: why? Because the sales rep just found out that most universities teach all machines—induction motors, synchronous machines, dc machines, even transformers—all in one term, in one subject, to be covered in one 100-mark paper. You can sell your old-fashioned really good book on dc in the library, yes of course you will do that [and get rid of it; of course, no reprints ever!], but now you need to find an author who will give a jumble of formulas all together with a lot of examples based on those formulas and in between working principles of everything in brief: and you have your book which will sell! Easy! You find some highly respected chap in one of the best universities of the world, tell him that you will supply him with every sub-heading of the book needed, and even the books from which he needs to adapt, and he will get a 6-7 or even 10 percent royalty, and the deed is done. A book which neither the market created nor the author: a book created by urge for profits, by the syllabus system. You should be in good books of the deans to not to change the syllabus every now and then.

I will approach the issue of peer review in a separate detailed essay: both “anonymous” and “open.” What’s certain right now is that with an increase in education, one would have thought that there would be better material available more easily! But it’s the reverse that’s happening: judging from the number of magazines and fiction books devoted to either of the three of adult, chick-lit or horror/fantasy, it seems even the fiction market is not much exempt from the phenomenon of what I call “flooding the market to create the market.”

There are these two sentences from a book on C. S. Lewis:

There is in recent centuries an expanding technical tradition and logic whereby the individual gives significant ground to the group as an outcome of an aggregation procedure. In today’s world, no less than in Lewis’s, the collective is thought to have greater weight and value than the individual, where the collective, not the individual, is thought pivotal to social progress.

There are three things to think about.

(1) Should I change “gives” to “concedes”, since that is more the sense here? But “concedes” also anticipates the book, the arguments to come, by a little bit: it is as if you were deploring already the rising importance of collective over individual. So I decide to leave “gives” as “gives.”

(2) Where is the stress of the author, what is his/her point? The individual gives ground to the group as the main thing, and how the group happens as secondary? In which case “an outcome” is fine. Or is the method–the “aggregation procedure”–important? Also place it in the perspective of the sentence opening, “an expanding technical tradition….” The method seems to be important, more so since already the required tragic emphasis on collective’s higher weight is being supplied by the second sentence. And so I will change “an outcome” to “the outcome.”

(3) The “where” is simply confusing. We already know that we are talking about today’s world and Lewis’s world, and that is where the action is situated. Change “where” to “and” so that the reader can flow on smoothly without creasing his brows too much.

The final changes look like these:

There is in recent centuries an expanding technical tradition and logic whereby the individual gives significant ground to the group as the outcome of an aggregation procedure. In today’s world, no less than in Lewis’s, the collective is thought to have greater weight and value than the individual, and the collective, not the individual, is thought pivotal to social progress.

Two subjects in two clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction are best separated by a comma most times:

Not surprisingly, the war had a profoundly negative impact on agricultural output and the peasantry lived in virtual poverty during the war years.

changed to

Not surprisingly, the war had a profoundly negative impact on agricultural output, and the peasantry lived in virtual poverty during the war years.

Clarity is everything. Good that you understood. Good that the grammar and vocabulary used by the author are fine. But think of the poor readers. They may not be as well read as you. And, most importantly, the first and really the only rule of thumb while editing is that, the text should be such that a trained eye, a good reader does not have to go back to gather the sense: the flow should be swift and unimpeded.

In the case below, I prefer since though most others go for because. Many people associate “since” only with the sense of “depuis“, that is, they take it only in a temporal sense, hence the latter preference. For me, one of my idiosyncrasies as every editor should have, “because” is more like you are avowing something, confessing something, making a clean breast of something.

In the case of the 1946-47 Soviet famine, one must start by tracing the roots of the poor 1946 harvest, for subsequent government actions … were … a reaction to poor harvest yields and the resulting scarcity of grain.

changed to

In the case of the 1946-47 Soviet famine, one must start by tracing the roots of the poor 1946 harvest, since/because subsequent government actions … were … a reaction to poor harvest yields and the resulting scarcity of grain.