Recipe for a Better Peer Review (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Myra J. Seaman, Asa Simon Mittman
Organizer Affiliation
College of Charleston, California State Univ.-Chico
Presider Name
Myra J. Seaman
Paper Title 1
Discussant
Presenter 1 Name
Caroline Palmer
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Boydell & Brewer, Ltd.
Paper Title 2
Discussant
Presenter 2 Name
Catherine E. Karkov
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. of Leeds
Paper Title 3
Discussant
Presenter 3 Name
Emily Steiner
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Paper Title 4
Discussant
Presenter 4 Name
Timothy L. Stinson
Presenter 4 Affiliation
North Carolina State Univ.
Paper Title 5
Discussant
Presenter 5 Name
Marci Sortor
Presenter 5 Affiliation
St. Olaf College
Paper Title 6
Discussant
Presenter 6 Name
Richard K. Emmerson
Presenter 6 Affiliation
Florida State Univ.
Paper Title 7
Discussant
Presenter 7 Name
Daniel Powell
Presenter 7 Affiliation
King's College London/Univ. of Victoria
Start Date
14-5-2016 1:30 PM
Session Location
Fetzer 1005
Description
Peer review has long stood as the gold standard for academic publications, trusted to determine if a work’s methods and conclusions meet the discipline’s requirements and thus prove it is “serious scholarship.” Peer review is at times “blind,” in which the reviewer remains anonymous, and sometimes “double-blind,” in which both author and reviewer remain — at least in theory — unknown to one another. This system is the bedrock of scholarly production and an integral part of the hiring, tenure, and promotion processes. But does it continue to work for today’s scholarly community the way it once did? Does it function to foster new ideas and approaches, to improve the writing we do, and to maintain appropriate “standards,” however defined? We aim to convene a roundtable featuring participants in all parts of the process, including editors from academic presses and journals, academic grant officers, digital humanities publishers, authors, and administrators who oversee the tenure and promotion processes that often depend on publications. As a great many of us are involved in both sides of peer review, taking on various roles in the process, we do not anticipate any difficulty finding productive participants.
In 2013, the BABEL Working Group hosted an ICMS roundtable on “Blunder,” which featured a memorable presentation reveling in the pain and frustrations authors can experience during peer review. This proposed session, in contrast, does not aim to provide a forum for documenting the problems with peer review but rather to present a series of practical proposals for renovation or replacement. We welcome presentations on recently adopted variants, as well as pledges for new approaches. Surprisingly, as far as we can tell from the online archive of the ICMS, while there have been occasional papers on the subject, in the last decade there has only been a single ICMS session dedicated to this central aspect of our professional lives, and this was focused only on digital media (2008: Digital Media and Peer Review in Medieval Studies, Sponsor: Medieval Academy of America Committee on Electronic Resources, Organizer: Timothy Stinson).
We believe that this vital and influential process should not be taken as a given, as currently practiced. Topics for discussion might include: anonymity; reward for reviewers; accountability; effects on innovation; basic goals of the process; and whether, in fact, peer review ought to remain the standard model.
Recipe for a Better Peer Review (A Roundtable)
Fetzer 1005
Peer review has long stood as the gold standard for academic publications, trusted to determine if a work’s methods and conclusions meet the discipline’s requirements and thus prove it is “serious scholarship.” Peer review is at times “blind,” in which the reviewer remains anonymous, and sometimes “double-blind,” in which both author and reviewer remain — at least in theory — unknown to one another. This system is the bedrock of scholarly production and an integral part of the hiring, tenure, and promotion processes. But does it continue to work for today’s scholarly community the way it once did? Does it function to foster new ideas and approaches, to improve the writing we do, and to maintain appropriate “standards,” however defined? We aim to convene a roundtable featuring participants in all parts of the process, including editors from academic presses and journals, academic grant officers, digital humanities publishers, authors, and administrators who oversee the tenure and promotion processes that often depend on publications. As a great many of us are involved in both sides of peer review, taking on various roles in the process, we do not anticipate any difficulty finding productive participants.
In 2013, the BABEL Working Group hosted an ICMS roundtable on “Blunder,” which featured a memorable presentation reveling in the pain and frustrations authors can experience during peer review. This proposed session, in contrast, does not aim to provide a forum for documenting the problems with peer review but rather to present a series of practical proposals for renovation or replacement. We welcome presentations on recently adopted variants, as well as pledges for new approaches. Surprisingly, as far as we can tell from the online archive of the ICMS, while there have been occasional papers on the subject, in the last decade there has only been a single ICMS session dedicated to this central aspect of our professional lives, and this was focused only on digital media (2008: Digital Media and Peer Review in Medieval Studies, Sponsor: Medieval Academy of America Committee on Electronic Resources, Organizer: Timothy Stinson).
We believe that this vital and influential process should not be taken as a given, as currently practiced. Topics for discussion might include: anonymity; reward for reviewers; accountability; effects on innovation; basic goals of the process; and whether, in fact, peer review ought to remain the standard model.