[jox] Re: Peer Review
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:25:45 +0200
Hi Mathieu, Graham, Athina, all!
Very interesting discussion again :-) .
I'll put all my comments on this thread in this post.
4 days ago Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
"Reinventing academic publishing online. Part I: Rigor, relevance and
practice" by Brian Whitworth and Rob Friedman.
First Monday, Volume 14, Number 8 - 3 August 2009
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticl
e/2609/2248
A nice article indeed (though I did not real all of it). The good
thing about our journal is that it doesn't come from the academic
tradition and thus has not necessarily to align to the tradition
outlined in the paper.
What I liked most was this distinction:
Type I. Errors of commission: things done that are wrong.
Type II. Errors of omission: things not done that would have been right.
I think it is clear that we need a good balance here and probably all
of us don't want to make too much error of omission. That is the
Oekonux tradition of being open. But also from the Oekonux tradition I
know how difficult it is to keep the balance between errors of
commission and errors of omission.
I'd like to push Mathieu's idea a bit further.
4 days ago Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
Thanks also for comments - OK, I like the idea of being open to
less-fully formed ideas: there could be a different format for
submissions for example. "Working papers"? That would be a definite
plus in terms of attracting submissions. (Though I would not want
to stop more developed pieces from being submitted as well.
"Research papers"?).
Why not have different sections in the journal? One for rather
established stuff and one for the bleeding edge? If articles are
flagged this way by the editorial board then it is clear what we
publish because we think it is well established and what is published
although we think it could have / has sharp edges.
4 days ago Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
So they advocate opening up the review process (reviews would become visible
so reviewers would get some recognition) while maintaining its blindness
(the identity of the author is secret during the review process). However
how this would work will only be revealed in Part II - when will this come
out? Next month perhaps.
Would be interesting to read indeed.
Now, this is a complex issue. For example, I have published very few
articles in peer-reviewed journals. Pretty close to zero. I am working on
two papers right now. They are important to me, the result of several years
of thinking. I know I could (perhaps should) do the noble thing and send one
or both to an Internet-based journal. But deep down I feel that I would like
the validation that only an established journal can give. When I have
published one or two papers like that - showing that I can do it - then I
would submit to open-access journals. I think a lot of emerging academics
think like that - or they can't afford not to think like that if they want
to get a job in this super-competitive environment.
I can well imagine this way of thinking. But as you probably agree
this is totally alienated from having a good journal. The question to
me is whether we want to deal with this at all.
In a nutshelll: we need some incentives for people to publish with us.
There is already an incentive: Help the progress of mankind. Isn't
this enough?
Here are some random thoughts.
1- We could encourage people to submit papers that have already been
published in a closed journal - that way they would reach a new audience and
get more feedback.
2- For this we need good reviewers and good comments. There could be a
system where open discussion on a list leads to editorial comments being
appended to papers. Not sure. I don't think we should rely on "anyone can
comment" to do this job - no-one may comment or comments may be mediocre.
3- There needs to be some clear guidelins for an open comment process:
-- closed editorial list / closed registration process?
-- deadlines for comments to be made?
I think it's not either-or. IMHO it would be best to have some
appointed reviewers for a certain review doing an open review
published on the web. In addition we can open the review for
suggestions from the general public but these are just to help the
reviewers who are still responsible for the review.
Also with the general public being able to support the review process
we have a chance to attract new staff: People regularly supporting the
review process by useful comments could be asked to become official
reviewers.
4- It is clear that different review processes could be useful. We need to
define precisely the different review processes: blind or not, open or not,
etc.
I have no problem with the author's names hidden. But I don't see why
the reviewers should hide their identity.
4 days ago graham wrote:
To encourage this, I think our CFPs should have a general statement of
what is relevant, but be based on themed issues (I've been looking back
through the 'draft CFP' thread but can't actually see the draft CFP - so
apologies if I'm just repeating what's been said). Someone who has (for
example) just done a lot of research on 'open access' and sees we have a
CFP for an 'open access' issue is likely to think how they could fit
their work into a peer production context; if they just see a journal
about 'peer production' it may not occur to them.
Very good point.
4 days ago graham wrote:
So the review processes seem to split into two: academic style, and
informal non-transparent 'an editor does it'. I haven't found anyone
deliberately doing a transparent version.
So how about we be the ones to do it, but as an experiment?
I fully agree but why as an experiment? Couldn't this be just our
policy?
The big downside to this is it's likely to involve double the work for
us :-(
Why do you think so?
Grüße
Stefan
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