The Empirical Humanist

A recent arti­cle (“Wikipedia Age Chal­lenges Schol­ars’ Sacred Peer Review”) in the New York Times inves­ti­gates how schol­ars are start­ing to adjust to the Dig­i­tal Age by adjust­ing the notion of peer review. In a time when any­one can “pub­lish” any­thing on the Inter­net, the con­cept of peer review for aca­d­e­mic pub­lish­ing has come under severe pres­sure. Some crit­ics, cit­ing abuse, argue for aban­don­ing the idea. Oth­ers, men­tioned in this arti­cle, are exper­i­ment­ing with “cloud peer review.”

This makes sense to me as an aca­d­e­mic. Peer review can pro­vide valu­able feed­back, both in terms of val­i­dat­ing con­tent and in help­ing to improve the read­abil­ity of the text. On the other hand, review­ers often have the men­tal­ity of “keep­ing bad ideas out of print.” They ride their own ide­o­log­i­cal hobby horses. The Inter­net allows ideas to stand or fall into obscu­rity in the mar­ket­place of ideas. Slash­dot pio­neered (so far as I know) the idea of “mod­er­a­tion”: read­ers would rate com­ments on an arti­cle up or down. One could set fil­ters and read only the most highly rated com­ments out of the great flood. Granted, in spe­cial­ized dis­ci­plines (like mine) not everyone’s opin­ion is of equal value. So a peer review could have — as some jour­nals men­tioned in the arti­cle — a “core” of qual­i­fied spe­cial­ists. But this core could be very large, e.g., every­one who is a mem­ber of an aca­d­e­mic soci­ety of that dis­ci­pline. Based upon some rea­son­able cri­te­ria, some opin­ions would “weigh” more than oth­ers. Hav­ing an earned PhD in the field might add to one’s “weight,” and hav­ing pub­lished on the same topic as what one is review­ing might be another criterion.

As for me, I have never liked the elit­ist atmos­phere tra­di­tional peer review has engen­dered, nor have the ben­e­fits of the “anony­mous reviewer” out­weighed the dis­ad­van­tages of hav­ing “gate­keep­ers” guard­ing the entry of ideas into aca­d­e­mic con­ver­sa­tions with lit­tle or no account­abil­ity. I would rather deal with the dis­ad­van­tages of broader pub­lish­ing and try to fig­ure out ways to let the “cream rise to the top.”

The fun part of all this is that there is noth­ing that the Acad­eme can do about it. The Inter­net allows self-​​publishing and end runs around tra­di­tional peer review. How will the Acad­eme respond? Let the fol­lies commence!