<story><title>I will not log in to your website</title><url>http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3203</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lucb1e</author><text>I do not recognize the problem the author talks about, but it seems weird. From the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Prof. Aaronson, given your expertise, we’d be incredibly grateful for your feedback on a paper &amp;#x2F; report &amp;#x2F; grant proposal about quantum computing.  To access the document in question, ...&lt;p&gt;It seems odd to want feedback and then ask someone to go and register somewhere, probably requiring to accept a bunch of legalese in the privacy policy and terms of service... Just attach the document you want feedback on, right?&lt;p&gt;At least if I&amp;#x27;d email someone (out of the blue or an acquaintance) for feedback due to his expertise, I&amp;#x27;d be grateful for the time taken and try to make it as easy as possible to do.&lt;p&gt;Edit: it has been made clear to me that it&amp;#x27;s not about individuals contacting the author, it&amp;#x27;s some big corporation that probably sends this out, probably in an automated manner. I still don&amp;#x27;t understand why anyone would bother with this when &amp;quot;peer reviews&amp;quot; can happen between &amp;quot;peers&amp;quot; (i.e. sending each other documents for review, rather than going through the middleman that everyone seems to hate such as Elsevier, if blog posts linked on HN are to be believed).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelhoffman</author><text>This is the norm in academic publishing. Not only do publishers (often for-profit publishers with huge profit margins) ask us academics to critically review submitted manuscripts gratis with short deadlines, but they also want us to use their poorly designed, byzantine online systems to do it.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s most fun when you are just trying to decline this invitation because you do not have time and are asked to create an account and password (with stupid password rules, naturally), and fill out an amount of personal information just to do that.</text></comment>
<story><title>I will not log in to your website</title><url>http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3203</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lucb1e</author><text>I do not recognize the problem the author talks about, but it seems weird. From the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Prof. Aaronson, given your expertise, we’d be incredibly grateful for your feedback on a paper &amp;#x2F; report &amp;#x2F; grant proposal about quantum computing.  To access the document in question, ...&lt;p&gt;It seems odd to want feedback and then ask someone to go and register somewhere, probably requiring to accept a bunch of legalese in the privacy policy and terms of service... Just attach the document you want feedback on, right?&lt;p&gt;At least if I&amp;#x27;d email someone (out of the blue or an acquaintance) for feedback due to his expertise, I&amp;#x27;d be grateful for the time taken and try to make it as easy as possible to do.&lt;p&gt;Edit: it has been made clear to me that it&amp;#x27;s not about individuals contacting the author, it&amp;#x27;s some big corporation that probably sends this out, probably in an automated manner. I still don&amp;#x27;t understand why anyone would bother with this when &amp;quot;peer reviews&amp;quot; can happen between &amp;quot;peers&amp;quot; (i.e. sending each other documents for review, rather than going through the middleman that everyone seems to hate such as Elsevier, if blog posts linked on HN are to be believed).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>evanb</author><text>When asked to peer review something for academic publication, the PDF of the paper is, in my experience, never ever emailed.</text></comment>