Aspect of peer review

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@worldnet.att.net>]

List members may find the following to be interesting.  It is snipped with
permission from an email from a friend, a humanities professor at a research
university, who, apologizing for style, asked that I not use his name.  I
was arguing for the merits of personal or self-publishing, to which this
response:

>The largest hurdle for scholarly publishing by authors themselves, even
using the technologies that you mention, is still the blind review issue.  
On the one hand, we know the dangers that are involved in anonymous
reviews in electronic media, for example, look at how they are used on
Amazon.  On the other, there has always been a suspicion that when
reviewers are known they will not be critical.  The whole academy claims
to be committed to blind reviewing which is overseen by editors.  The
counter to this is book reviews, which are certainly not anonymous.  But
we may be dealing with a culture shift here.  Reviewers may have to come
out in the open if the new technology takes off.  Certainly people are
injured (or helped) by editors who send their work to specific reviewers
they suspect will react in positive or negative fashion.  Maybe it will be
like the Olympics.  Amateur standing was becoming BS.  Let's just cut to
the chase and let everyone have a shot.

Joe Esposito