The Voynich Ninja

"Peer review" generally means that a publisher or journal is interested in publishing the piece or book but sends it to subject experts for review before making their decision. The most dependable peer review is anonymous - that is, the author doesn't know who is doing the review, and the reviewer doesn't know who the author is. So the first step is to submit it to a journal or publisher to gauge their interest. Publisher and journal websites always include instructions for submitting your work. They may reject it outright, or they may decide to send it to outside reviewers for feedback. It can take multiple rounds of review and revision before acceptance, and/or multiple submissions to multiple publishers/journals. However, you should NOT submit to multiple places simultaneously. It takes time and patience, and you really need to listen to the feedback you may get from the anonymous reviewers. One of the points of peer review is to help you make your work better before publication.

Self-publishing is an easy way to get your work out there, as Cheshire has done, but without the imprimateur of pre-print peer review, readers have no way of knowing if the work is dependable. You have to decide if you are willing to make that tradeoff.

I'll also add that peer review doesn't automatically mean the published work is going to be accepted by readers. But it's an important first step, and without it, readers have no way to know how dependable the work is.

Thank you, Lisa, for your explanation. I guess, patience and frustration to get the rejections of the publishers is not a luxury I can afford at my age. I will just do, what the author of the Voynich Manuscript did: share his knowledge and wisdom with the likeminded. Who knows, maybe some 600 years from now, somebody might be interested.

Free book about the rosettes page on Google Play by Dr. Gerard E. Cheshire:
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When I skim through the book, the whole presentation seems long-winded and contrived. The "translation problems" are well known.

He still thinks the term for "the Roman alphabet" is "Italics". I am writing in Italics right now!

I don't want to create a new thread for it, but I think I should link to this new creation of GE Cheshire: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (October 2024).

Unassumingly named MEDICINAL USES FOR A TOXIC PLANT IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN and published in a Turkish archeological journal, it gives some decodings and a letter correspondence chart with a possible "origin" of symbols (which is intriguing but ultimately implausible: mixing Greek, Phoenican and Arabic letterforms? Really?)

But the real jewel of this paper is the way he describes the previous research. I thought you guys will find it amusing.

Quote:The key difficulty in discovering the language and writing system of the manuscript was that they required solving simultaneously. This was achieved by a combination of experimentation and lateral thinking (Cheshire, 2021) in combination with a framework of informed logic based on historical research (Cheshire, 2023 & 2023b, pp.22-55). Thus, the language and writing system systematically emerged by trial and error, until it became possible to positively identify the script alphabet symbols and the intended words and phrases

Quote:As mentioned, in addition to the phonetic spelling, other attempts to decrypt the manuscript reached an impasse because they always focused on either the language or the writing system, never both, in union. Nor had a hybrid language been considered. Therefore, there was never a correlation initiated, that would allow for a successful outcome by working the one against the other (Turing, 2020). In fact, knowing that past attempts must have exhausted all conventional approaches, such as variations on symbol frequency analysis, it indicated that an innovative approach would be required (Landini, 2001, pp.275-295; Amancio et al, 2013; Montemurro & Zanette, 2013; Timm & Schinner, 2020, pp.1-19; Zandbergen, 2022). It also meant that it would be logical to dismiss other theories as they had served their purpose by demonstrating that conventional approaches were incorrect strategies. The correct strategy required a new methodology, applied from scratch and in isolation, away from specious influence (Williams, 1999, pp.305-319; Amancio et al, 2013; Herrmann, 2017; Acedo 2019, pp. 14; Layfield et al 2020, pp.74-78; Zelinka & Dao, 2020, pp.15-22; Bowern & Lindemann, 2021, pp.285-308; Matlach et al 2022; Parmentier, 2022, pp.461-484)

That's certainly an innovative way to say "I didn't bother reading anything about VM but I'll cite something to prevent crackpot accusations".

What I imagine that happened here is that he only had Cheshire in his reference list, which should obviously get one desk rejected. Since he doesn't want to read what anyone else writes, he decided to birth a diverse list by saying: all these are bad.

If I weren't a moderator here, I would say some bad words now.

I wonder how many journals he tried before he found one that would accept him.

(01-02-2025, 04:30 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder how many journals he tried before he found one that would accept him.

When Cryptologia fails, Journal of Arteoloji is a natural second option for groundbreaking Voynich research.


(I can't believe he still calls the Roman alphabet the Italic alphabet.)