CSHE/Mellon Peer Review Study Now Available

["Okerson, Ann" <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Center for Studies in Higher Education

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We are delighted to announce the publication of:

Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Its Meaning, 
Locus, and Future
A Project Report and Associated Recommendations, Proceedings from 
a Meeting, and Background Papers

Authors: Diane Harley and Sophia Krzys Acord

The publication can be viewed online and downloaded at: 
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#

Since 2005, and with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon 
Foundation, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) has 
been conducting research to explore how academic values -- 
including those related to peer review, publishing, sharing, and 
collaboration -- influence scholarly communication practices and 
engagement with new technological affordances, open access 
publishing, and the public good.

This report includes (1) an overview of the state of peer review 
in the Academy at large, (2) a set of recommendations for moving 
forward, (3) a proposed research agenda to examine in depth the 
effects of academic status-seeking on the entire academic 
enterprise, (4) proceedings from the workshop on the four topics 
noted above, and (5) four substantial and broadly conceived 
background papers on the workshop topics, with associated 
literature reviews.

The document explores, in particular, the tightly intertwined 
phenomena of peer review in publication and academic promotion, 
the values and associated costs to the Academy of the current 
system, experimental forms of peer review in various disciplinary 
areas, the effects of scholarly practices on the publishing 
system, and the possibilities and real costs of creating 
alternative loci for peer review and publishing that link 
scholarly societies, libraries, institutional repositories, and 
university presses. We also explore the motivations and 
ingredients of successful open access resolutions that are 
directed at peer-reviewed article-length material. In doing so, 
this report suggests that creating a wider array of 
institutionally acceptable and cost-effective alternatives to 
peer reviewing and publishing scholarly work could maintain the 
quality of academic peer review, support greater research 
productivity, reduce the explosive growth of low-quality 
publications, increase t!
  he purchasing power of cash-strapped libraries, better support 
the free flow and preservation of ideas, and relieve the burden 
on overtaxed faculty of conducting too much peer review.

This latest report on the state and future of peer review is a 
natural extension of our findings in Assessing the Future 
Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty 
Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines (2010), which stressed the 
need for a more nuanced academic reward system that is less 
dependent on citation metrics, the slavish adherence to marquee 
journals and university presses, and the growing tendency of 
institutions to outsource assessment of scholarship to such 
proxies as default promotion criteria.

Links to the complete results of our ongoing work can be found at 
The Future of Scholarly Communication Project website.

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Diane Harley, Ph.D.,
Principal Investigator and Director, Higher Education in the 
Digital Age Project,
Center for Studies in Higher Education
771 Evans Hall, # 4650
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720