Re: [jox] Multi-rating mode of evaluation
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:28:23 +0100
Hi Brian and all!
I'd like to reply to this from the perspective of peer production.
Last week (7 days ago) bwhitworth wrote:
Statements like "We should publish only papers that we agree are fit
for publication" or "We should ..." in general assume that we
control the journal. Our paper at
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2609/2248
opposes that control mentality to introduce the ideal of democracy
in academic publishing, i.e. government by the people for the people
Well, I'd say yes for the openness and transparency but no for those
who make the choice - at least for a journal like this.
Peer production projects are not democratic but have maintainers (aka
leaders) who are listened to by volunteers. The maintainers are
maintainers not by any alienated facility but because their work is
useful for the project at hand.
This is how I see it for a journal like this as well. People *do*
subscribe to such a journal *because* they trust the responsible
persons to make a good choice for them because they don't have the
time / knowledge / ... for this work. Just like people *do* choose
Ubuntu *because* they trust the Ubuntu maintainers to do a good job.
Likewise the ratings of registered readers, while informal, are not
unexpected nor imposed. The public is always entitled to its
opinion. The system need only identify and ban spammes and trolls,
as Wikipedia does. The view of the public should not be a secret, so
people can rate what they read.
Yes. And this is more like classical democracy then. But the readers
can only give their opinion on pre-selected items. As I argued the
pre-selection is exactly the task of the persons responsible for the
journal.
Grüße
Stefan
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