Peer Review

Unfortunately I don’t have any personal experience with peer-review, as I have never submitted a paper for publishing.  I also missed the class on peer-review, as I was recovering from a bad bout of food poisoning, so I apologize if anything in this blog post repeats a discussion that took place in class.  But from what I’ve gathered from the Lovejoy (2011) and Fitzpatrick (2009) readings, peer-review strikes me as a double-edged sword, that like so many other institutions in academia (and in the world in general), has both positive and negative aspects inherent within it. 

Clearly there exists a need to assess the validity of claims in academic journals.  This seems to be most relevant in fields like the medical sciences, where the veracity of claims can affect the very lives of patients.  I would certainly not be comfortable being prescribed a medicine if the research findings about it were not published in a journal with very rigorous standards.  But when it comes to other academic fields, I do agree with Fitzpatrick’s overall statement that at times the peer-review process can lead to the exclusion of new and interesting ideas.  I also agree with her argument about Wikipedia – that it would be more useful to teach students how to properly use it as a source, rather than banning it altogether – however I can’t really get behind her notion that Wikipedia itself is basically a platform for ongoing peer-review (p.10).  While its pages are certainly undergoing a process of continual editing, I don’t know if you could in good conscience call all of Wikipedia’s editors “peers.”  If the logic of peer-review is the critiquing or editing of a work by experts in the field  (or a closely related field), I doubt that everyone who contributes to a Wikipedia page could be considered an expert. 

I also agree with Fitzgerald’s emphasis on the fact that the advent of digital publishing is changing the process of peer-review, as well as other standards of legitimacy.  This seems to mirror the reality that the prevalence of blogging and tweeting is changing the process by which news stories are fact-checked and vetted before being released to the public.  This movement appears unstoppable, and it is clear that the standards by which all publications are validated need to adapt accordingly, however I’m unqualified to venture a guess at how this could be accomplished.  At the risk of sounding cynical, the only solution I can think of is to instill in future generations a greater sense of the value of critical analysis, so that they will learn to consult a variety of sources in order to make informed decisions.

Fitzpatrick, K. (2009). Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy.  Retrieved from: mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsolescence/

Lovejoy, T.I., et al. (2011). Reviewing manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals: A primer for novice and seasoned reviewers. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 42(1), 1-13.