Bachmann, Talis

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Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience

Can quality be extracted from quantification of interactions by NBS?

Talis Bachmann

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Can Quality be Extracted from Quantification of Interactions by NBS?

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COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE
rarguments, specifications can be pro-
vided. People become buried under the 
overload of materials and duties they 
can not cope with and frustrations will 
not decrease compared to the present 
habitual system, but may even increase.
2. The NBS system is basically a system 
capable of offering a quantitative data 
on the publishing affairs and activities 
of access to and use of the papers inclu-
ded in the database of the network. 
How come quality out of the quantity? 
Traditionally, top experts (read: edi-
tors and reviewers) dispersed between 
very many journals with their own 
traditions and idiosynchrasies have 
made their evaluation based decisions. 
This is an Elitarian system combined 
with diversity and chances for “many 
tastes.” Citation statistics is essentially 
based on (i) whether someone has read 
the paper and/or knows its scientific 
merits and therefore uses it in his/her 
own work for substantial reasons and 
(ii) on scientific-political motivations 
such as flattery, service to friends. So 
roughly half of the indices of impact 
reflect the quality and relevance of the 
publication. In the new system sug-
gested by Zimmermann et al. (2012) 
where downloads statistics becomes 
the main measure of impact the rela-
tive role of substantial type of factors 
may be disproportionately diminished. 
Compared to a citation (which bears 
some responsibility of the citing author 
with regard to what is cited in terms of 
relevance and quality of the cited work) 
a download click is much less responsi-
ble an action. There are a vast many rea-
sons for downloads besides the paper 
or an author being of high quality – 
curiosity, intrigue, habitual knowledge, 
and routine database-check, size of the 
scientific “brotherhood” or “alumni-
circle” (the larger it is, the more clicks 
A commentary on
Network-based statistics for a community 
driven transparent publication process
by Zimmermann, J., Roebroeck, A., Uludag, 
K., Sack, A. T., Formisano, E., Jansma, B., 
De Weerd, P., and Goebel, R. (2012) Front. 
Comput. Neurosci. 6:11. doi: 10.3389/
fncom.2012.00011
In order to advance the peer review 
based evaluation system Zimmermann et al. 
(2012) suggested to use network-based sta-
tistics (NBS) combined with modern search 
tools of internet. In my opinion, the new 
system they envisage include many use-
ful and positive aspects such as openness, 
visibility of pre-publication manuscripts, 
researchers’ initiatives to put forward papers 
of colleagues for review and publication, 
increased transparency of the pre-publica-
tion procedures, etc. The main underpin-
ning of the proposal by Zimmermann et al. 
(2012) is an attempt to increase quality of 
the published works and the to-be-shared 
scientific ideas accessible to a wide commu-
nity of scientists.
However, the system as envisaged may 
bring in also some questionable, if not 
counterproductive results if not counter-
acted and taken care of ab ovo. Let me share 
a few worries:
1. The new NBS based and fully integra-
ted system has a danger of expansion 
and overpublication. This is in terms of 
mass of published and accessible mate-
rials, burden of scientists as authors, 
reviewers, commentators, database 
monitors, etc. This also means that if 
authors justly feel they have been done 
injustice in evaluation and commen-
taries, they physically and in terms of 
time resources cannot “wrestle” with all 
this. No sufficiently strong and visible 
(and numerous) explanations, counte-
and downloads irrespective of the 
 quality of work). Quality is essentially 
not reflected in downloads statistics. 
Unless some other means of evaluation 
focused on substance and quality will 
be used, the downloads-statistic in NBS 
may backfire. Quality cannot be auto-
matically derived from quantity. (For 
my own views on related matters see 
Bachmann, 2011.)
3. The wide-open community-controlled 
system has another danger, that of 
scientific populism dependent incre-
asing dominance of the mediocre (or 
scientific power structure based) ideas 
together with marginalization of the 
truly innovative, ahead-of-its-time, 
ideas, and approaches. In the traditio-
nal system, because of less integration 
of the journals, schools, authorities, 
and a wider variety (and perhaps partly 
because of a narrow circle of reviewers/
editors) novel thought and approaches 
have always had their chance, sooner, 
or later. In the envisaged community-
based, totally integrated, and fully open 
system social-psychological rules of 
power structure formation and incre-
ased influence of the persuasive and 
marketing skills depending factors may 
gradually get an upper hand over the 
talent based, ahead-of-time, or other-
wise original thinking. By an analogy, 
the selection factors in the evolution 
of the scientific ideas, instead of being 
varied and dispersed, become unitary, 
and therefore potentially counterpro-
ductive for scientific thought evolu-
tion (if not fatal). Furthermore, if you 
write as expected by a majority and 
stay within the prevailing paradigm 
(or within the views defended by the 
leaders) you get prize and acceptance, 
but if you present views ahead of your 
time or not fitting with the views of 
the leaders in the field, you are not 
Can quality be extracted from quantification of interactions by 
NBS?
Talis Bachmann*
Institute of Public Law, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
*Correspondence: talis.bachmann@ut.ee
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org April 2012 | Volume 6 | Article 22 | 1
General Commentary
published: 10 April 2012
doi: 10.3389/fncom.2012.00022
luation? “Community-based” brings in 
an association with “communism” and 
we all know where this ultimately ends 
up. Some private elitism is inevitable in 
such realities as science and discoveries. 
If a system is a bit populism-prone and 
disproportionately communal, intellec-
tual freedom based advancement may 
be in danger. In my view, scientific 
impact means whether new important 
facts, theoretical developments, inno-
vations in methods, syntheses of the 
earlier views are achieved, i.e., whether 
something has been really advanced in 
terms of influencing the ways we think 
about our subject and understand it. 
Network statistics may be somewhat 
irrelevant for knowing about the sub-
stantive impact and may even motivate 
more conformism.
RefeRences
Bachmann, T. (2011). Fair and open evaluation may call 
for temporarily hidden authorship, caution when 
counting the votes, and transparency of the full pre-
publication procedure. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 5:61. 
doi: 10.3389/fncom.2011.00061
Zimmermann, J., Roebroeck, A., Uludag, K., Sack, A. 
T., Formisano, E., Jansma, B., De Weerd, P., and 
Goebel, R. (2012). Network-based statistics for a 
community driven transparent publication pro-
cess. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 6:11. doi: 10.3389/
fncom.2012.00011
Received: 26 February 2012; accepted: 27 March 2012; 
published online: 10 April 2012.
Citation: Bachmann T (2012) Can quality be extracted 
from quantification of interactions by NBS? Front. Comput. 
Neurosci. 6:22. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2012.00022
Copyright © 2012 Bachmann. This is an open-access arti-
cle distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 
Attribution Non Commercial License, which permits non-
commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in other 
forums, provided the original authors and source are credited.
 popular and your evaluative ranking 
is low. Consequently, the new NBS 
system should build in some procedu-
res or principles where diversity, origi-
nality, difference from the bandwagon 
approaches will not be jeopardized. 
Advancement of science has been 
always driven by the minds represen-
ting minority of thought at the time. 
This is despite the fact that peer review 
has been present already for long 
time either in terms of reviewing for 
journals or collegial pre-publication 
criticism. Now, the question is, whe-
ther the envisaged NBS statistics based 
system (Zimmermann et al., 2012) 
would be a more favorable context for 
innovative (ahead-of-time or simply 
original) scientific development com-
pared to the traditional system of eva-
Bachmann Quality versus quantity
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org April 2012 | Volume 6 | Article 22 | 2


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Can Quality be Extracted from Quantification of Interactions by NBS?

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