My letter to Physics Today was just published in its issue in October, 2024. Hopefully, it’ll draw attention from a wider audience to the issues and a possible solution to these issues of peer review or evaluation systems in various research activities in STEM fields, including those in job applications, tenure review, refereed publications, and grant/facility proposals. The solution proposed in two papers, “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research” and “OePress: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM “, will hopefully start a peer-review reform in basic research. By implementing a sophisticated credit- and role-based incentive mechanism, we could establish a new self-sustaining ecosystem for the entire scientific community. Rigorous science requires rigorous evaluation, and scientific innovation won’t develop efficiently until such a system is built.
Author: Wanpeng Tan
I share my ideas and thoughts mainly about mirror matter theory and open science on this blog. Under the new theory, we live in the universe with a mirror (hidden) sector of particles. A perfectly imperfect (minimally broken) mirror symmetry is the key to unlock the beauty and elegance of our universe. Click on the menu links for a popular introduction, a technical summary, and list of my papers on the new mirror matter theory.
OePRESS: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM
Based on the earlier paper “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research“, we will present more quantitative details of the full scheme of such an evaluation system — an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM (OePRESS) that is ready to be implemented.
Abstract: In light of the failed peer review system in basic research, we propose a novel open science initiative: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM (OePRESS). In particular, three different types of research activities — original research, indirect contributions (e.g., participation in the evaluation system), and funding/time requests — should be evaluated using quantitative and continually refined metrics. This new community-based rigorous evaluation system will provide the best incentive for all members by rewarding them with accurate recognition of their innovative achievements and accurate credit for their service and other contributions to the community. The system rewards the quality, not the quantity, of accomplishments. Community members earn credits for their research and other activities in OePRESS, and as they accumulate experience and credits they can advance in their role in the community. High-risk, high-reward research projects will have a better chance of being funded. Eventually, when funding agencies and hiring institutions rely on this rigorous evaluation system to make their decisions, we will see a self-sustaining community of researchers striving for perpetual innovation and development.
Paper on new pairing mechanism for unconventional superconductivity is accepted for publication
My paper titled “New pairing mechanism via chiral electron–hole condensation for non-BCS superconductivity” has just been accepted for publication at J. Phys. Chem. Solids 193 (2024) 112148. Continue reading “Paper on new pairing mechanism for unconventional superconductivity is accepted for publication”
The new website MirrorUniverse.org is up and running
The website of mirroruniverse.org dedicated for the studies of the new mirror matter theory and its test is now up and running. Content-wise, I still have a lot to do and I’ll slowly get it up to date. If you’d like to participate in forum discussion there or make other comments at the site, you need to register. The best (recommended) way to register/login is through the authentication with ORCiD which provides an open ID for all scholars. Here is the link on this how-to if you need more details.
I still need lot of help on the other website: openarxiv.org. In particular, we need people who have experience in developing ePrint platforms or softwares like eprints.org, biorxiv.org, etc. Please contact me if you’d like to help.
Volunteers are needed for graphic and web design of two websites
Two websites are under construction: mirroruniverse.org and openarxiv.org. We need volunteers who are experienced in graphic and web design to join the team for building these two websites. Feel free to contact me at <wtan AT nd.edu> if you are interested or have further questions.
Continue reading “Volunteers are needed for graphic and web design of two websites”
New chiral electron-hole pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity
Motivated by the ideas from the NJS model and the concept of staged chiral quark condensation developed in mirror matter theory, I ventured into superconductivity and fortunately developed a novel microscopic pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity. It took me the entire summer and more to reacquaint myself with BCS superconductivity and associated condensed matter physics and I have to immerse myself in the extensive literature on superconductivity accumulated over the past decades.
Continue reading “New chiral electron-hole pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity”
Random Thoughts on Diversity, Equality of Opportunity, and the Golden Mean
Introduction/Abstract
Diversity is argued to be the central or original principle based on our ponderance about the evolutionary Universe, life, and human civilization. Egalitarianism, or more precisely equality of opportunity, and many other social tenets such as democracy, freedom, justice, and fairness, are representative or derivative of this central Diversity Principle, and therefore their interpretation should always be normalized under the context of diversity. Conversely, extremism, bias, prejudice, and other social aberrations, are detrimental phenomena of anti-diversity.
Continue reading “Random Thoughts on Diversity, Equality of Opportunity, and the Golden Mean”
Mirror Symmetry for New Physics beyond the Standard Model in 4D Spacetime
Finally, my most recent work on “Mirror Symmetry for New Physics beyond the Standard Model in 4D Spacetime” got published about a week ago in Symmetry 2023, 15(7), 1415. Unfortunately, it did not get much attention it deserves or as I hoped, in particular, no attention from any string theorists. I wish some string theorists will read it and continue to work on these exciting ideas.
Another essay contest by FQxI.org on “How could science be different?”
This is the 2nd time I am participating in an essay competition held by FQxI.org. This time the topic is “how could science be different” and participants must be anonymous. Here is the link for all participating essays: https://qspace.fqxi.org/competitions/entries. Winning the competition is not exactly my goal, but attention gained via winning, which would hopefully lead to implementing my dream sketched in the essay into basic science fields such as physics in the real world, will be!
My first-time experience with FQxI was not great. I thought I wrote a pretty good article titled “No single unification theory of everything” about three years ago. Most of the comments under the article in the forum were very positive. Two of the participants even explicitly claimed that they gave me a full score (10 points), including one who was eventually one of the winners. But I don’t know how I could end up with a pretty despicable average score of about six. Hopefully, anonymity will help this time.
Implementation of an improved review procedure for high-risk high-reward funding programs
As far as risks are concerned, there seems to be a consensus view on general funding strategies from different funders: government funding agencies tend to fund low-risk proposals while private foundations, at least in principle, should fund more of those so-called high-risk high-reward projects. Unfortunately, these high-risk high-reward funding programs, in their actual practice, often utilize similar measures that have been applied for funding main-stream or low-risk projects. Here, an improved review procedure for such programs will be tentatively proposed, which will be easy to implement and meanwhile biased properly toward high-risk, potentially paradigm-shifting proposals.