An Alternative to Peer Review, or a New Format for Peer Review?

|Peter Boettke|

Read this NYT article carefully, this is not an alternative to peer review, but a new format for peer review that might actually be better than the double-blind system because of increased transparency and thus accountability on the part of the reviewers.  This is not, I would argue, blogging as scholarship, but instead using a blog-like framework to facilitate the peer review process among professional experts in a field.

HT: Lenore Ealy

Comments

[Roger Koppl]

The article quotes Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist, saying, “Knowledge is not democratic.” Well, Lamont has it backwards, which is why I think open review will grow increasingly important. I encourage Dan to experiment with open review for EJW.

A linked NYT article quotes NYU prof. Clay Shirky (not sure I want him on my team with that name!) saying:
“The difference between the alchemists and the chemists was that the printing press was used to coordinate peer review,” he said. “The printing press didn’t cause the scientific revolution, but it wouldn’t have been possible without it.”

The book turned wizards into scientists. Web-based open reviewing has the potential to make science more open and integrated.

I suppose the important point then becomes how you define the peer community. That is probably something that will have to be worked out over time by experimentation. I imagine a good start would be tenured professors at accredited colleges and universities.

[Roger Koppl]

Barkley Rosser had a post the other day on the same basic idea:
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2010/08/harvey-friedmans-proposal-for.html

Am I the only one who thinks this is cool and probably the future of peer review?

[Troy Camplin]

THis is a wonderful expansion of peer review. Sometimes outsiders have critical insights overlooked by the insiders.

[Barkley Rosser]

As a journal editor I have actually proposed this to my publisher, not to replace the standard approach, but as a possible alternative to coexist, which is how the logician Harvey Friedman posed it in the middle of the still ongoing, if slowed-down, controversy over P != NP, that the article cites.

One thing that came up is that there already is a journal that does this sort of open web-based peer reviewing as its only approach in economics, the Kiel-based Economics e-journal, which has published some interesting papers. However, there is relatively little citing of those papers (although maybe not as little as of the papers being published in the new AEJs), and that journal has not yet appeared at any level of seriousness on published journal rankings. So, at least so far it is not going to offer an alternative for people who need to get tenure by publishing in journals that receive official recognition somewhere or other.

Another point that has been raised privately to me is that such an open peer reviewing process can turn power over to a small group of especially assertive loudmouths who may not know what they are talking about. In the case of the P != NP discussion, very high-powered people like Friedman got brought in, as well as some Fields Medals winners. But that is a special case, a very big question, with a proposed proof using a new approach that draws on ideas from a bunch of different fields. So, lots of people got pulled into the action. That is not what is going to go on with your average paper.

Anyway, I am personally open to this new approach, but suspect that it is going to be slow to catch on and will not displace the standard way of doing things anytime soon.

[Greg Ransom]

I've always liked Behavior and Brain Sciences with its open and signed reviews with many multiple reviews from competing disciplinary guilds.

[Barkley Rosser]

So, Pete. Are you going to pursue this for RAE?

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[jordan]

thanks. very helpful