Comments on: 5. Peer Review

By: lschiff

lschiff — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:04:25 +0000

At SSP, Christopher Surridge from the Public Library of Science made a convincing argument that since peer review serves multiple purposes, those purposes should be broken apart and focused on by discrete groups of people with the right skills for addressing that particular task. For instance, one group of people may be able to select among submitted articles to find the exciting and important research that should be published regardless of venue. Another set of people (and skills) would then be required for reviewing such a vetted set of articles for various publications. The ETAI hybrid approach seems like an effort in that direction, but the reviewing process is still tied to a specific journal. Decoupling that first group of people from a given journal or publishing site seems compelling but difficult to accomplish.

By: sdshattuck

sdshattuck — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:04:30 +0000

Just a comment on the relationship between the sciences and the humanities — projects like arXiv and ETAI’s two-stage review process certainly illustrate that some academic publishing in the sciences can teach the humanities how to reform its academic publishing. However, I think it’s also important to underscore that the most exciting innovations in reading/writing & digital media often happen at the intersections of the humanities and the sciences (MediaCommons is an example); I’m thinking of XEROX PARC’s XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading (http://www.onomy.com/redweb/index.html), for instance, and projects at MIT Multimedia Lab — where cultural theorists, linguists, and literary critics (among others) shape the technology and its use just as much as the programmers. MediaCommons seems singularly poised to promote these kinds of cross-disciplinary revisions, collaborations, and critiques.

By: David Parry

David Parry — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:35:03 +0000

To take the more radical position, why should academic affiliation even matter? If what is being trafficed in here is ideas as a member of a community why should that be limited to affiliation with a .edu address? And in some cases I can imagine this authority as running contrary to the needs of the institution, as the comment above points out–you can leave but you can’t take your email with you, or any of the ideas attached to it.

By: Chuck Tryon

Chuck Tryon — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:52:52 +0000

This question of using email addresses (for example) as identifiers of academic affiliation may be a little complicated for young academics who change positions several times. I’ve had three positions in three years, making my personal email address far more permanent, which is why I use it. I agree with the implication that these models depend on scholars being willing to write under their own names, but I wonder if there are other, more effective ways of communicating academic affiliation.

By: Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:51:22 +0000

In fact, I would contend that in the humanities, where “quality research” is arguably more subjective than in the sciences, the blind peer review process can directly undermine new research. When a project challenges established orthodoxy (which good research should regularly do, right?), anonymous reviewers can defend their turf without engaging in conversation or publicly representing themselves as unwilling to reconsider their positions. I’ve had anonymous reviewers reject my work in ways that are merely dismissive, not thinking about how they might develop a project or better respond to counter-arguments – while I’m sure such reviewers would be willing to publicly critique my work, the veil of anonymity allows them to be non-constructive. If such reviews were tied to a reviewer’s reputation, they would have to argue their position proactively, not just issue defensive dismissals. The result is that work that replicates & applies existing ideas uncontroversially can pass review, while original arguments can be rejected under the cloak of darkness.