Re: [jox] Identity of reviewers
- From: lincoln dahlberg <l.j.dahlberg xtra.co.nz>
- Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 14:12:19 +1200 (NZST)
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Hi Mathieu and all,
I agree that consistency is important, I also think publishing all reviews would be useful for improving quality, quality of reviews is a regular complaint of authors and I think this innovation would be attractive - I think it is important to focus on what will attract quality contributions, without such all the journal's hard work is for naught.
Related to this, and apologies if I have interpreted the current policy incorrectly, but speaking from past experience of academic journal editing I think the journal should be somewhat cautious about the meaning of 'openness' with regards to revealing author names to reviewers before a publication decision. Here I am thinking of the extensive power relations in academia {accompanied with practices ranging from bullying to favouritism} including in publishing, and the reputations and egos at stake, which I don't believe the journal can get past. As such I would suggest that:* both author and reviewer names be kept confidential until after a decision to publish or not publish.
Again, I'm particularly concerned about the journal attracting quality contributions in the first place. I wonder how many academic authors might be somewhat weary of revealing their names to unknown reviewersbefore review - I know power cannot be eliminated, but, again, academia is full of petty personal politics and intellectual 'bias' etc that we should at least attempt to tone down. Either author and reviewer names are revealed, or both are confidential until publication decision. But maybe this is already the case so apologies for the ramble, just a concern.
best
Lincoln
________________________________
From: Mathieu ONeil <mathieu.oneil anu.edu.au>
To: journal oekonux.org
Sent: Monday, 6 June 2011 6:26 PM
Subject: Re: [jox] Identity of reviewers
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pps.. Looking at the open access economics journal that Toni referenced I see that not all papers have reviews (reviewers are identified, btw); however they don't publish first drafts...
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/journalarticles/2010-2/view
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2009-11#assessment
----- Original Message -----
From: Mathieu ONeil <mathieu.oneil anu.edu.au>
Date: Monday, June 6, 2011 10:00 am
Subject: Re: [jox] Identity of reviewers
To: journal oekonux.org
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Hi all
This reminds me of the Wikipedia trope of being able to "look
under the hood" of knowledge production so that as Clay Shirky
would say knowledge does not arrive fully formed by mysterious
magic (like in alchemy) but can withstand the withering scrutiny
of peers (as in chemistry, which had the same actors and
elements as alchemy but was open to external review).
In the context of CSPP, the problem is consistency. On Wikipedia
all article histories and debates are archived by default.
In our case if authors and reviewers can opt in and out of
publishing first drafts and reviews, paper 1 may have no first
draft and review A and C but not B, while paper 2 will have a
first draft and review C only. My question is : (a) how useful
is this scientifically and (b) won't this look kind of messy and
reflect poorly on the journal?
To be clear, I'm not against the idea - in fact we started with
the assumption that reviews would be published, which may indeed
improve review quality and it does make sense to publish a first
draft as well - just concerned about the patchiness of what we
end up with...?
cheers,
Mathieu
ps. I'm also not clear whether we should let authors decide
whether reviews should be published or not - maybe that should
be a condition of article publication - that reviewers will have
the option of publishing their review?
From: Gabriella Coleman <biella nyu.edu>
Ditto.
Biella
On 06/05/2011 09:39 PM, Athina Karatzogianni wrote:
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If the reviewers have the option to remain anonymous, and
their comments not
to be widely disseminated and the authors under review have
the option to
not have the reviews widely published and the first version
of
their paper
not published, then I would agree with Toni's scheme of
things. In which
case, authors and reviewers should be clearly informed from
the outset what
the overall procedure is and what their options are (to
remain
or not
anonymous, to have or not to have their comments published,
and whether the
original version is published or not etc).
Thanks
Athina
On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:14 AM, Toni Prug
<tony irational.org> wrote:
will it be mandatory to publish the first draft of essay
contributions?
i don't think it should be. quite a few authors are a
likely
to feel
anxious about it, especially at the time where such culture
does not exist
in the social sciences and humanities. however, we can
encourage it and
leave it to authors to decide. If peer reviews are
published
and the authors
reference them in the final published version, the points
of
contributions>> will be known. The actual magnitude,
qualitative
nature of contributions
made by the reviews can only fully be exposed by publishing
the first
version. Alternatively, we can encourage authors to note in
the footnotes a
bit more detail on how reviewers' comments influenced each
major change
applied to the final published version.
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****
Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University
email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au
web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php
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